


whispering seas

by deniigiq



Series: Selkie Verse [1]
Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, And Sibling Hate tbh, Childhood Sweethearts, Fae & Fairies, Family, Family Feels, Foggy and Candace are a dream team y'all, Friendship, Gen, Ireland, Magic, Music, NOT omegaverse y'all, Parents just doing their best for their strange children, Selkies, Sibling Love, this is a Song of the Sea AU ya'll
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-05 14:43:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 42,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20490563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “We’re not herding,” Foggy told Candace late the next afternoon. “We’re guiding.”He had to tell her to pipe down and stop flailing before Mom heard her.“Come on, human,” he whispered, “Let’s go lay a sign.”(Song of the Sea AU. A new selkie comes to the village, but he doesn't seem to want to come play with Foggy and his sister.)





	1. come away o human child

**Author's Note:**

> I am now writing to the niche of the niche!! Do I care??? Not even a little. 
> 
> This AU is based on the **Song of the Sea, dir. Tomm More**. You don't have to watch that to get this, but it will help, like, a lot. It doesn't follow the exact story line, but it does explain a lot of the tropes I'm working with.
> 
> More's work speaks to my very soul. I admire every single part of his movies, from the art to the music, to the storytelling and I have been stressed out of my gourd for the last few weeks, so I'm taking a break from everyone and everything to revel in self-indulgence/self-care.
> 
> Just fyi, Foggy and Matt are 8yo, here. Candace is almost 5, and all the adults are still adults. That is all. This is a family show.

There was another one. Someone like them. Somewhere close by.

“Foggy, stop, honey. I’m going to drop your sister,” his mom scolded.

He let go of her sleeve and pouted but followed the order and watched her sweep past. Candace flung herself over his mom’s shoulder and pulled the sides of her mouth wide with her fingers.

He wrinkled his nose back.

Sisters, man.

“Mo-_om_,” he griped.

“Fran-_klin_.”

Candace giggled.

God. Did this really have to be so difficult?

He ducked under the table and caught his mom as she went back towards the pile of clothes in the foyer. He got in front of her but she just went around like he wasn’t even there.

“_Mom_,” he moaned. “I can _feel_ them.”

His mom ignored him as she walked towards the fire with one of the wet coats. She shook it out so that water sprayed everywhere, then hung it opposite from the other one.

“We can all feel them, honey,” his mom said. “But it’s not their time yet. Soon.”

Foggy moaned and draped himself over the couch. His hair had finally dried, but now it was all stuck together with salt.

“You say that every time,” he grumbled into his forearms.

“That’s because it’s true every time. You can’t rush into these kinds of things, Foggy.”

Uh. Yeah, you could. Foggy had rushed into it. Why couldn’t this new kid?

“We didn’t have a choice with you, Fogs. We nearly lost you, honey.”

Yeah, yeah. He knew. Still, though.

“You’re not gonna lose _me_,” Candace announced smugly. Foggy jerked up to make sure she caught the full force of his glare.

“_You’re_ not one of us,” he snapped.

“Franklin!”

“She’s not,” he defended. His mom looked like she’d frozen in the middle of a gasp.

That was never a good sign.

“Candace is your sister,” she snapped.

Ugh. Half-sister. She was his half-sister. The other half of her was the devil’s child.

“Apologize,” his mom sniffed.

Candace wriggled expectantly. It wasn’t fair that she got to look down at him like that. She was the little one, and she was the troublemaker. If she wasn’t here, boasting about not getting lost, then they wouldn’t even be having this conversation.

“Foggy.”

He hated that warning tone.

“Fine,” he huffed. “Sorry, you’re not one of us,” he sniffed.

Candace squeaked in offense. His mom sighed.

“Fogs, if you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all,” she said. “Go take a bath; come back down whenever you’re fit for human company.”

“I’ll _never_ be fit for human company,” he said.

His mom sighed again. But she didn’t follow that up with anything, which technically meant that he’d won. It felt good. He made sure Candace knew it. She huffed at him, but whatever.

He’d still won.

And having won, he could now leave this judgmental place for upstairs and a shower.

Candace was a dumb human-child which meant she couldn’t swim for anything, but, like so many of her fellow dumb humans, she was obsessed with water. Any water. Puddles, tidepools, lagoons, wells.

Candace was desperate to drown herself. And since Mom and Dad had things to do to keep everyone else in the village convinced that they were normal people, it fell to Foggy to mind her to prevent all things drowning-related.

It was a lot of work. Candace was a menace. And she liked it when Foggy fished her out of things; she got a kind of thrill from making his life difficult.

“Why can’t you be human like Calle Morrison, huh?” he snapped at her after he’d yanked her and her busybody nose out of yet another snail home.

No respect for her fellow creatures, this girl had. Not even a lick.

“You can’t do that,” he scolded. “Snails don’t like that. How would you like it if some big giant put their nose in your living room?”

Candace wriggled out of his grip and he caught her hand mid-plunge.

“I said stop,” he barked.

And to his surprise, Candace froze. Foggy was taken aback, then realized she wasn’t looking at the snail-home anymore, she was staring out across the waves.

“A boat!” she suddenly shrieked.

Man, you’d think she’d never have seen one before. He glared down at her, but she didn’t acknowledge him, so he squinted out to where she was pointing with a chubby finger. Then he blinked in surprise. And his heart soared.

He nearly flung Candace to the side.

“That’s _them_, Candy!” he cried, yanking her around. “That’s them! Come on, we gotta go check ‘em out.”

He didn’t give her much choice, although he did stop to help her up out of the sand when she tripped.

There was indeed a new boat at the docks. Foggy knew all of them now, and this one was definitely new. It was painted red on its sides. It looked kind of old, but more or less in good condition. No one was in it by the time that he and Candace got out far enough to inspect it and its slowly bobbing contents.

There were the usual life jackets inside, one big one and one small one.

Foggy could practically do a cartwheel.

“They’re around my age,” he told Candace. She ignored him and tried to stick some fingers in her mouth. Gross. Those had just been in a snail-home, girl. Come on. He caught them before the deed was done.

“No finger-eating,” he reminded her.

“I wasn’t doing nothing,” she pouted.

“Yeah, you were.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yuh-huh.”

“Nuh-_uh._”

Alright, whatever. He had more important things to do than fight with sisters right now.

“Where are they?” he asked, scanning the docks for small life-jacket-sized people.

There wasn’t anyone out there, as far as he could see--well, anyone besides the usual suspects talking in circles about fish or whatever here and there. They weren’t important. Where was the ferryman? He’d know about the newcomers.

Foggy dragged Candace over to the place where Mr. O’Connell usually spent his time talking people’s ears off and emphatically not telling them when the next ferry would be going out. The shack he usually sat in was old and rusted on the sides from all the rain. It had a little plastic window on the front of it and the counter behind that was lined with post-it notes, staplers, stamps, and an ancient cash register for Mr. O’Connell to stow all his ferry money in.

Neither the old man nor his pot belly were in their usual place, however. His shiny yellow raincoat was missing, too.

Hm.

“Where’s he gone, now?” Foggy asked the shack.

It didn’t respond. It never knew. To be fair, no one ever did.

The tell-tale sloshing sound of a someone stepping onto wood on water ripped Foggy’s attention away from the shack and there, right there. Right where they’d just been, over in the new red-lined boat, was a body.

A small one.

_Score_.

“That’s them,” Foggy hissed to Candace. She was grumpy about being made to run all over the place, though, and wasn’t half as excited. She pouted and squinted.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

Was he sure? Of _course_, he was sure. What kind of question was that? He could feel his kind from miles away.

“Let’s go say hi,” he decided.

Foggy realized only when he was closer to the boat that the body he’d thought was inside it, very much wasn’t. It—or rather, he—was trying to be, though. Really hard. He kept grabbing at the boat’s sides with one hand like he was trying to steady the whole thing.

He didn’t notice Foggy or Candace creep up behind him either, which was weird. Foggy could smell their kind on him. Salt and earth and cold and bright glittering light. He felt their kinship so high in his chest it was practically buzzing—practically ringing in his collarbones. But the other boy didn’t even turn around.

That didn’t make sense. That was just rude, actually. Whenever you felt that buzzing, you were supposed to take notice; at least a nod of acknowledgement would do. But this kid wasn’t even giving him that. It was like he didn’t even know that Foggy was standing there to begin with.

Foggy didn’t know what to do.

He didn’t know who was older here. If he reached out first and it turned out the other boy was older, then they’d be getting off on the wrong foot from the start, and Foggy wasn’t about to sacrifice what could be a beautiful friendship out of his own impatience.

So he waited. And watched.

And watched.

And?

Watched?

The boy seemed to be getting really frustrated. He balled the hand patting at the boat’s side into a fist and pounded it on the old wood a bit, saying something Foggy couldn’t hear clearly with his human ears.

Foggy cocked his head just as the other boy decided, screw it, all or nothing, and caught his fingers onto the inside of the wood panel. He made as though to hop into the boat and every alarm in Foggy’s head immediately started shrieking.

The boat had floated a good foot or so away from where it had been and the kid was going to drop his foot right against its curved inside if he jumped then. That would lead to slipping and that would lead to falling and _that_ would lead to a head being cracked against the dock planks, which was bad on every possible level.

Foggy jerked forward and shouted out before he could stop himself, but it was too late. The boy had already pushed his momentum forward.

“MATTY, NO.”

It all happened in a flash, but the big voice behind Foggy was suddenly in front of him and, in the form of a huge dark-haired man, it seemed to snatch the other boy up right before he even managed to slip all the way. A clatter and a rattle sounded out, and before Foggy knew it, the big man had hauled the other boy all the way up onto his shoulder like he was a baby like Candace.

The boy was startled. Red-haired and startled, but his fingers dug into the big man’s shirt almost immediately.

Foggy had just swallowed a sigh of relief when he saw the cause of the rattling sound there on the dock, laying diagonally across the perpetually rotting planks.

It was a cane.

A white one with red on the end of it.

Foggy had seen one on tv once, and it meant.

It meant.

He stared up in shock at the boy that the big man was checking over now for injuries.

The other selkie--probably a pale, spotted one, given his hair--was blind.


	2. to the waters and the wild

Foggy didn’t see the other selkie after that, even after the ferryman intervened to make sure everything was okay. He laughed at the dark-haired man and told him that he had a great eye and some quick wits about him, but the dark-haired man was too worried about his selkie to pay much attention. 

He put the selkie back in the boat and after a minute, hopped in himself. He told the ferryman they'd talk again later that week and Mr. O'Connell waved him and his selkie off. The selkie didn't say anything, he seemed ashamed and kept his head towards the water.

When they were a couple hundred yards out, the ferryman said something to Foggy about Foggy and the red-haired selkie going to the same school in a few weeks here.

Foggy spent the next weeks surveying his classmates and double-checking every orange mop he saw in the halls, but all he ended up with was a fat load of nothing. The other selkie was nowhere to be found.

While Foggy was keeping Candace from trying to die (by car this time) the following Thursday, he looked back from the streetlight and finally saw what he realized was probably the reason why the selkie had all but vanished without a trace.

There, behind them on the last proper street of the village, was a school. It was old. Really, really old and it had a huge knotted cross at the top of the stone arch in front of it.

It was a Catholic school.

No one Foggy knew went there; but the other kids at his school said that that was where parents sent bad kids—kids who had been expelled from other schools in the surrounding area. They said that there were nuns and priests inside those stone walls who stalked the halls like black and white ghosts.

Foggy had mixed feelings about nuns, priests, and the like.

Some of them were lovely. They were those who had meshed their knowledge of the _fae_ with the knowledge of the People of Books who came before them. One of them was an old monk who lived on the side of one of the coves that Foggy and his seal-siblings liked to play in. He fished, and when he caught a fish that he didn’t like but couldn’t salvage, he would throw it their way.

He sang sometimes. But not often in a language which Foggy could understand. It was still nice. People didn’t sing enough these days.

But not everyone was like the old monk; there were a lot of book-folks who spat at the idea of the _fae_. Foggy’s parents told him to stay far away from those kind, you’d know them from miles away.

Looking up at the cross with Candace tugging on his hand, he was suddenly taken with a strong hit of sadness.

The selkie, if he went to this school, might not even know that he was a selkie, or, worse yet, might have been forced to reject his instincts.

That was bad news.

Bad book-people started by telling you that the _fae_ don’t exist. Then they took your coat and hid it, destroyed it even, so that you could never return to the sea. And if the selkie in question wasn’t strong enough or didn’t go back to at least touch the land of the fae every so often, they’d fade away to nothing or worse, they’d turn to stone.

Or even worse, they’d become human, and then they’d die.

Foggy swallowed and very carefully opened himself up to the swaying pulses of the _fae_ in the village. Candace was talking to him, but he couldn’t hear her.

He didn’t hear her afterwards, either, when all he felt was the pulse of a selkie close by.

Through the stone.

“Foggy? Why are you sad?”

Candace wasn’t allowed in his room and normally he’d yell at her to get out, but right now he didn’t feel up to it.

He just felt heavy.

“The other selkie lives under the cross,” he said to the floor.

Candace struggled with the sheets he’d hung around his room, but eventually found the seam in between them. She crawled in and joined him in the fort. She’d brought a couple of shells. Scallop shells, coral-y pink.

It was nice of her.

“Does that mean he’s gonna die?” she asked quietly.

“Maybe,” Foggy said. “If someone doesn’t get him out of there, then probably.”

Candace put the shells down and then pulled her knees up to her face.

“Can we rescue him?” she asked.

Foggy didn’t know. Mom and Dad always said that things that would be, would be. It wasn’t their business to make people feel one way or another, it was their business to keep things in balance. To comb the sea. To humble the humans.

They weren’t heroes, Mom and Dad said, leave that business to the warriors and the giants.

“We can’t,” he said. “It’s not our place.”

“But he’s one of us,” Candace whispered.

Foggy’s gut instinct was to snap that she was wrong, he was one of _theirs, _not one of Candace’s, but Candace was only human in so much as she couldn’t take on the seal-form. She was the product of two half-selkies and it was only by chance that she was not one of them. She still had enough contact and Sight to straddle that line between human and not, but she didn’t have enough of anything else to tip her over the edge either way.

To keep pushing her away really wasn’t fair, just like Mom was always saying.

He dropped his head and swallowed hard against the tears.

“We can’t do anything,” he said again to the floor. “It’s not our way.”

“He’s a brother!”

At this rate, he’d be a stone or a human before any real brotherhood was established.

“Foggy, we have to! He’ll die.”

He knew, he knew, he _knew_. But Mom and Dad would be furious.

There was only one rule and it was to stay in your lane. Don’t mess with fate.

“But,” Candace murmured, “What if this is our fate?”

Foggy froze. Then looked up right at her.

“Say that again?” he asked.

Candace puffed herself up.

“What if our fate is to save the selkie?” she asked.

What if…

What if she was right?

“Franklin. Candace. No,” their mom said uncharacteristically harshly. “There’s one rule, kids.”

“But _Mom_,” Candace cried, “This is our _fate_!”

“No, it isn’t,” Mom sniffed. “If the selkie is to be saved, then it is by the hand of a human.”

“I _am_ a human,” Candace whined.

Foggy didn’t say anything. There wasn’t really much to argue here. Selkies didn’t usually save other selkies. Support, maybe, but save? No. The _fae_ couldn’t rely on each other for savior or strength, they gained those things from humans, out of sacrifices and bargains. The old monk on the cliff, for example; when he died, the seals would leave that cove until someone else took his place to keep the offerings alive. To sing.

The best the _fae_ could do was to bring someone into the fold and teach them how to survive, how to be safe and where to find offerings.

“But he’s gonna turn to stone,” Candace groaned, following their mom from the living room to the kitchen. “And he could be linked to a _hero_, Mom!”

He could be, that was true. The _fae_ were occasionally responsible for the raising of heroes and giants.

“If he’s linked to a hero, then the hero will come to save him,” Mom sniffed. She pulled Candace out of her skirts and marched her back to the couch. Candace flung herself back down beside Foggy and pouted. Foggy just watched. And thought.

Mom sighed so hard her shoulders dropped.

“I know it’s hard to watch,” she finally said, sounding like she meant it, “I know you want to help him. We _all_ want to help him, I promise. I can feel him, too, sometimes in that school. But it’s none of our business, little ones. We are not shepherds. We guide, we don’t herd. The selkie, if he wants our help, must reach out to us first. Only then is it our place to reach back to help him. It must be his decision.”

‘We guide, we don’t herd,’ Foggy heard echoing around through his head.

“We’re not herding,” Foggy told Candace late the next afternoon. “We’re _guiding_.”

He had to tell her to pipe down and stop flailing before Mom heard her.

“Come on, human,” he whispered, “Let’s go lay a sign.”

Candace shrieked into her palms and rushed off to get her wetsuit on under her clothes. Foggy checked the hall, then hopped across into his bedroom to do the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These kids are at a very small village. Yes, they feel safe just tromping around with no parental supervision. Yes, yes, obvs this wouldn't happen in these times, whatever. It's happening here.


	3. with a faery hand in hand

Maggie was feeling a headache coming on from precisely two stories and a whine away, and while lately that was the result of Matty downstairs trying to fight the kids in 2A again, this time, it had much more to do with the damn selkie-child standing outside the school walls, staring up at the cross with sad, hang-dog eyes.

Aigh, children.

A mistake.

She’d made a mistake.

“Sister,” Matt yipped, ducking into the room and closing the door behind him. He scampered over and hid behind her. His fingers were _freezing_ which meant—goddamnit, son. How many times did she have to—

“SISTER,” the Mother roared as she slammed open the door.

Maggie felt Matt’s flinch and resisted the urge to draw him in and bark at the Mother. The Mother didn’t notice; angry old bat that she was. Instead, she advanced with a wrinkled, knobbly finger.

“That _boy_,” she hissed. “That boy is nothing but trouble.”

Yeah, tell her something she didn’t know.

“Reverend Mother,” Maggie said as evenly as she could, “He’s a child, he can’t help—”

“The rest of the students in this school are children, Sister Maggie,” the Reverent Mother swore. “And not one of them is half as insistent about getting their fingers in the holy water font.”

“He wants the water, Reverend Mother,” Sister Maggie explained. “He hasn’t been allowed out to sea for so long—”

“I am _aware_, Sister,” the Reverend Mother snapped. “Which is precisely why he can’t have it. You, yourself have proven that such urges can be overcome in the name of God. Matthew should be able to do the same.”

Matt tucked his forehead against Maggie’s side and, to his credit, did not growl or yip or anything.

It was an improvement, although whether that was from Jack shaking him and saying ‘no barking at school!’ or whether that was him starting to become aware of himself was unknowable.

Maggie sighed.

“I’ll speak with him, Reverend Mother,” she promised. “It won’t happen again.”

The Mother was satisfied with this display of submission. She liked the idea of one miracle coaxing another to life. She liked even more that this was happening under her supervision.

Might as well lean in.

“Come along, Matthew,” Maggie said behind her. “We will discuss, and then we will ask the Lord for forgiveness, yes?”

Matt didn’t look up at her; he rarely did anymore, but he pressed in closer and nuzzled into her side in affirmation.

The Mother glared.

Maggie tore him away.

“Come along,” she said, harsher than intended. She turned on her toes for the heavy wooden door at the exit of the room.

Matt took a moment to follow her. When he did, it was with hesitant steps and the light patting sound of him searching for walls. She didn’t look back at his no-doubt startled face.

Instead, she strode onwards, then waited at the stairs with as straight a back as she could manage.

Matty didn’t understand why sometimes Maggie was Mum and sometimes she was Sister. He struggled too with the boundaries of contact.

Why was it okay to touch and nuzzle in water, but not okay within the school’s stone walls?

Why was it okay to touch and cuddle Dad, but not Mum?

He didn’t understand. He was only eight, though. It wasn’t entirely his fault.

It wasn’t his fault that he was drawn towards the water, either. It had been ages since Maggie had taken him out for a bath. Between all the moving, the new Reverend Mother and her warpath against any and all things _fae,_ and the trial that was trying to get Matthew back into school, there just hadn’t been time.

Jack was at his wit’s end with the boy.

He was at his wit’s end about 90% of the time anyways, but he’d been especially anxious with Matt getting sleepy and cold and falling in and out of speech lately.

All Matt needed was some time in the water; just a little dip, not even a whole hour. Maggie knew this, but she just.

Aigh.

There was so much to do and so many eyes in this place.

This Mother Superior didn’t know why Matt was so drawn to Maggie and if she found out, she’d raise hell. Mother Ruth back home herself hadn’t been pleased to find out, but she’d decided that what Maggie did was between herself and God. And anyways, the rules about dependent children only applied when those children were human.

No one knew what to say to a selkie nun with a selkie child.

The good book was mum on that one.

But that was New York. And this was Ireland. Things were different and Maggie had to be careful.

She paused with her hand on the wooden banister.

Yes, it was Ireland and yes, things were different, but her pup was edging towards nonverbal. He was disrupting class. Fighting his classmates again.

She had some time that night. The Mother wouldn’t notice if she took an hour or two out of doors.

Right?

Matty listened willingly enough while she explained to him in the chapel that he couldn’t go around messing about with water at school.

“Save it for home,” she told him. “Where Dad can watch you.”

Matt mumbled a bit and kicked his feet. It was more or less in defeat.

Maggie glanced over her shoulder and then edged closer so she could tuck in next to him on the pew.

“I know, little one,” she whispered. “I know. Just be good for a little longer, okay?”

Matt hummed at the proximity and nuzzled back in. Maggie checked around again and then quickly cuddled back. He was freezing. She took his fingers.

“Do you know where your coat is?” she whispered.

Matt perked up and hurriedly lifted his face her way.

“Good,” she said. “When you get home, have a burrow for a few hours. I’ll talk to Dad, okay?”

The crowd went _wild_. She had to shush him before someone heard the fuss outside the heavy wooden doors.

Jack had always been uneasy about Maggie taking Matt out into the ocean, both before and after Maggie had left their home, but he’d become twice as insufferable in the wake of Matt’s blindness.

Maggie understood. Really, she did. But Baby wouldn’t learn how not to die if he never went back into the water.

“Don’t let him near any rocks,” Jack blustered as though Maggie hadn’t been doing this at least once a month for every year of Matt’s life.

“Jackie,” she warned.

“And no nets—Matty. Baby, come here. No nets, okay? You feel stringy things and you go right back to Mum, yeah?”

“Jackie,” she growled again.

As if she’d let Matt go stuff himself in a net.

“And if you get—if he gets tired, bring him right back,” Jack told Maggie with Matt trapped in his arms like a toddler. Matt, who had never really appreciated his daddy’s protective instincts, _hated_ being carried around like that. There was no better way to get him right to the end of his tolerance. Jack, however, had grown immune to the sensation of sharp teeth sunken in his forearms and shoulders. So he took no notice of this treatment while he stared soulfully into Maggie’s eyes.

_He is everything to me_, those eyes said every time.

Maggie sighed.

“He’ll be fine, Jack,” she said. “Give him here.”

Matt snapped his teeth at his dad one last time during the transfer and scrambled as far away from both parents as humanly and in-humanly possible. He yanked the door open and was out in the dark before you could even whistle.

Jack watched after him, then held a folded up cane out to Maggie pleadingly. She sighed again before taking it and stuffing it into her bag.

She heard Matt slip off a rock and eat shit outside with a yelp.

“He’s going to be perfectly fine,” she promised. “Don’t wait up.”

Matty was a highly athletic child, by which Maggie meant that he was virtually unstoppable once he got going. He was also very resilient, which was convenient. It really worked in his favor when he was inevitably slapped with the consequences of his actions.

Maggie watched him pick himself up from where he’d decided to try to boulder with a wince and a whine.

She would never understand this level of energy.

“Come,” she directed and just like that, the tumble was forgotten. Matt lunged up onto his feet and slipped and tripped through gravel to her side. She caught his arm before he went careening into a shallow pool and pulled him up indelicately.

“Small one,” she said, then waited until Matt was more or less looking up into her face. “I’m gonna need you to take this ten down to a six.”

Matty wasn’t verbal at this point. He’d gone too long between shifts and the anticipation of imminent freedom was compounding that. He bobbed his head furiously and shook himself out with deep breaths.

“Atta boy,” Maggie said, letting go of his hand. He caught back on to her forearm.

Ah.

So now he will be led, huh?

Knees can’t take anymore, kiddo?

Good.

She let Matt shuck his clothes in one of the nearby caves and also let him realize how hard that was while still wearing shoes.

He needed to do things the hard way, this one. It was his primary learning style.

She withheld his coat until they were both ready and then threw it over him before pulling on her own.

The change was immediate.

“Mum!”

There we go. Talking again already.

“Come on, come on, come _on_.”

And we’re back to a ten.

“MUM.”

“I’m coming, get back here, monster.”

Matty was a New York selkie. He was, Maggie was pleased to say, _precious_. He had a tiny American accent to his barks and yips and a spotted belly and he was about as bouncy and exuberant as they came. He was even willing to stick close to Maggie, which was more than could be said for the great majority of his peers.

Since he’d gone blind, he’d lost a good deal of his former surety. A lot of the fun that had come with soaring through the deep blue had turned to terror when he’d realized that telling up from down was far more difficult than it ever had been. Besides that, he couldn’t see predators. Sounds got muddled underwater. The waves crashing at the surface overwhelmed him sometimes, as did the lack of landmarks and boundaries below.

Matty was always swimming into a void these days, with only his white whiskers to lead the way.

He was getting better at it, though, and more of his old bubbly self appeared with each dive. Just like on land, he seemed to have some kind of knack for knowing where things were. He was growing in leaps and bounds, this one. And Maggie was proud of him.

She often told herself that she shouldn’t be. Pride was a sin. She should be pleased with Matthew because he was a person who was no longer suffering to the extent that he had been before. He was becoming more independent. Figuring out how to move through the world again.

He didn’t cry in the water like he had when the world had first gone dark.

He didn’t cling and whimper.

He didn’t really even need her to be there once they got past the line of rocks guarding the edges of the shore.

That’s why she should be proud.

Not because he was her son.

She took him out to deeper water a few hundred yards away from the lighthouse, where Jack was no doubt staring out and gnawing on his fingers just like he did on the docks along the Hudson. She batted Matt away from a few kelp beds with her flippers and, finding a place which was more or less Matt-appropriate, she let him loose to get all his menace out.

She lost him near instantly.

It was fine. That was kind of his thing.

If she really needed to, all she had to do was bleat a little into the water and he’d hear her and come paddling back up. In the meantime, she’d hunt around a bit. Get her fish kick in.

It was Friday. It was only Christian of her.

Matt came up two minutes later to present her with a beautiful tangle of fishing line.

She sent him back down for fish and fish only and he brought her back a license plate someone had chucked out to sea and if she could have sighed, she would have.

“Fish,” she emphasized to him. “Go eat.”

Matt brought her a mouthful of mussels which he showed zero inclination whatsoever in doing anything with besides scattering them around like a delinquent.

Aigh.

This boy.

Only God himself would be able to help him.

About half an hour into paddling-time, Matty finally figured out that that thing on his face was meant for fish-consumption. He took a dive and came up with a fish which he tried to give to Maggie.

He did this with Jack, too.

Jack usually just took whatever was offered to him with a ‘thank you, that is very nice of you’ and put it onto the closest flat surface for safe keeping (and later disposal).

Matt had interpreted everyone helping him do things when he was a baby as a something which everyone did for everyone else all the time. This, he’d decided, meant that other people always needed to be helped before it was his turn to be helped.

Maggie had smelled a rat, there, years back, and she’d followed it since only to find herself proven correct.

Matt wouldn’t so much as take a piece of paper these days if he thought that someone else wouldn’t get one because of him. It had been polite when he was sighted. Now, when people overwhelmingly failed to give him the things he needed, it meant that he was generally too timid and embarrassed to ask for help.

He’d rather chew his fingers like his daddy than remind his teacher that he couldn’t read a book printed in ink, even if it was a large-text one. It had been a problem in New York and even though they’d been working for a year on teaching him how to ask, he still really, really struggled with it here.

There had been more meltdowns around asking for help than there were around actual, visceral pain in Matt’s life. So Maggie scolded him and told him to eat his damn fish before someone took it from him.

He showed no sign of having heard this.

He went and set it on a rock and then went down for another.

One of these days another selkie was going to find him and then find Maggie to ask her how the fuck she’d ruined him this badly.

She decided she’d blame his poor, well-meaning human father and left him to it.

There was no stopping him now. Maybe he’d even eat the next one.

He did not.

She brought him back to shore hungry (_Why_, son? Why??) and then hiked back up to the lighthouse to deliver him into Jack’s arms, unharmed.

Jack fed him Cheerios while they dried off.

“Are there others out there?” he asked, pinning Matt in place as he tried to escape the hair dryer.

“None tonight,” Maggie said. “But there are.”

She felt something touch her elbow on the table and steadfastly did not acknowledge it.

Jack hummed.

“Do you like lighthouse work?” she asked.

He scoffed.

“Do you like school duty?” he asked back.

Touché.

There was another nudge at her elbow.

She ignored it.

“How many more days?” Jack asked quietly.

340, oh love of mine.

Only 340.

She stood up to leave an hour later and found a line of Cheerios set neatly around the rim of the table where her elbow had been.


	4. for the world's more full of weeping

Jack didn’t exactly enjoy coming to shore, but the lighthouse, he was disgusted to find, needed a lot of work and between having to fetch supplies for that and Matty having to go to school, he ended up on the mainland more often than not. And although he griped about false advertising and the uselessness of old man who’d lived in the lighthouse before, it was good for him.

A nice change. An important change.

Or so Maggie thought as she soaked a rag in the sink and set to work cleaning counters the next morning.

Jack had earned his wage by the tops of his knuckles for ten years. He was more than capable of doing any number of other careers, but he’d never known any different and, given that there was no promise of success or health in construction or contracting or any of the other things he could do, he stuck with the boxing.

It didn’t help that Matty was his biggest fan.

The child was an enabler.

Maggie hoped that being around his dad when he couldn’t go out and break faces would nudge Matt towards admiring his papa for different things. That, in turn, might remind Jack of his mortality and maybe give him a little push away from the boxing. Making friends with all the old men in the village at the various hardware and supply stores would help with that, too.

Baby steps. Baby steps.

Maggie understood that this was called ‘social engineering’ possibly ‘manipulation,’ but she chose to ignore it.

She was a nun. Jack was a boxer. The baby was a selkie.

There were a lot of crossed wires they had to straighten out here to make sure that no one’s cover got blown before Matt was eighteen. After that, it was none of anyone’s business what they all did with themselves.

But until then, there was work to do.

There were other selkies here in Ireland.

That blond one outside the school the other day, for example.

Him and his pod would be trouble, Maggie already knew it.

She scrubbed the stone counters in the convent kitchen with undue force just thinking about it.

Matty hadn’t been socialized to be with other selkies.

Maggie had birthed him in the Hudson—sorry, kiddo—so not only had the poor boy been blessed with an anti-social, highly religious mother, but he’d also lived his whole life as a river selkie, and these were almost always more individualist than ocean ones.

Matt had met maybe fifteen other selkies, and not one had been around his own age.

He was generally frightened of others. The males he’d encountered hadn’t been overly kind to him, especially not when they thought Maggie was due for another pup (she was _not_, thanks. Her maternal instincts were such that they’d decided that Matthew ought to be born in the _Hudson_. No, that was enough damage for both of their lifetimes). Irish selkies, Maggie was more than aware having grown up in these parts, were much closer knit than river folk.

If they caught wind of a bitty, baby selkie out splashing around with only his mama for protection, they’d lose their hivemind and steal him in a heartbeat and getting him back to the city at the end of the year would be a trial for everyone.

Not to mention that she and Jack had decided ages back they’d raise Matt to be as human as possible.

Jack had always been iffy on it, seeing as he got the brunt of Matt’s whimpering and agitation for the depths. He was the one who had figure out how to coax Matty back from the nonverbal and to get him to stop seeking water in public. He’d done a great job, Jack had, really.

Maggie respected him for it, but she also respected him for holding firm on their agreement.

When Matt had been conceived, she hadn’t planned on keeping him. Jack was devastated, though he understood after she’d revealed herself as what she really was.

That didn’t mean that his sadness was any less easy to bear.

Jack was, for her, the only one. The only mate she could ever imagine herself to be with. She gave him her coat in exchange for the child and he gave it back before it had even left her hands.

“If I can’t have both, then I’ll have you,” he’d said with his heart bleeding out before her.

She could have cried.

She couldn’t deny him anything after that.

She’d said she would let Jack keep the child if and only if he swore not to let it go to the Other Land. Otherwise, she would take it there herself and neither could come back.

She didn’t want to leave him and she certainly didn’t want to be stuck with a pup she couldn’t find it in herself to raise, but it was that or let the pup slowly turn to stone in a land which didn’t believe in the _fae_.

People didn’t have time for such things in New York City. Only the odd person here or there came to the shores and harbors speaking of selkies. Matt had never been left an offering. He wouldn’t know what to do with one even if someone had. Knowing him, he’d probably take it and leave it on the flat of a pier just in case that person came back looking for it.

To prolong that slow death by taking him to the Other Place to be restored by the powers that be, year after year, only for him to return to the City to fade away in the face of indifference, was an act of cruelty.

Bringing him to Ireland was already, in many respects, an act of cruelty, but one which Maggie couldn’t afford not to take.

She and Jack had had an agreement. She’d protect Matty until he was old enough to decide for himself if he would be selkie or human. She would then help him make whatever decision that would be. For that, Jack would raise him so that Maggie didn’t have to. He’d given her his grandmother’s ring and she’d given him a piece of her coat to seal the deal.

Since Matt had gone blind, he’d needed more protection than usual—at least until he got back up on his feet, so to speak. At the same time, Maggie had a life which she’d made for herself; she couldn’t refuse a mission just because she had a selkie dependent. It had already taken so much for the Church to believe her when she said she’d devote herself to it.

Jack hadn’t been happy about it, but all of his grandparents were Irish. Getting dual citizenship wasn’t such a trial. And a year in the old country? What the hell, Murdock? Why not? What other chance would you and Matt have to live abroad?

“It’ll make you cultured or something,” she’d told him.

He hadn’t bought it. But he also knew that he was going to Ireland, whether he wanted to or not.

Matt similarly hated it. He tried to be optimistic, but he hated it.

Jack said that he’d cried in the taxi to the airport.

He missed his school friends.

He missed the gym and Mr. Fogwell.

He missed Clinton Church and Father Lantom—he missed the old priest enough that he begged Jack and Maggie for postcards to send to him.

He was lonely, although he wouldn’t dare say that to his dad.

He didn’t like the stuffy, proper-ness of the new church or the school. He loathed the uniform and sought out Maggie for little blips of touch—tiny moments of comfort for him. A pup’s deep bred instinct to find its mother. He hadn’t done that in New York, not even between long periods of not going to sea.

The boy was frustrated. But he was afraid to be ungrateful or tell anyone how he was feeling. A single year in foster care during an especially rough one a few back had been enough to scar all three of them. Jack had damn near broken his back getting him back. Maggie had damn near broken hers trying to keep him from fading away during it. And Matty.

Well.

Matty had been through enough.

He hadn’t spoken for a whole year and any time Maggie had managed to sneak him into the harbor with her, he’d just clung. He didn’t want to be a seal. He was too tired to shift. He just wanted to be with her for a few moments of peace.

Never again.

Never again would she let that happen.

She was a shit mother, but neither Jack or Matt deserved to be separated like that. It had nearly killed both of them, and Jack still had part of her coat.

It had nearly killed all of them.

Never again.

She threw her rag into the sink and glared out the window.


	5. than you can understand

Foggy and Candace were disappointed to find that their sign had been ignored. The mussel shells which they’d arranged in a perfect circle by the red boat’s former mooring were scattered all over the dock the next morning. The fish Foggy had caught and placed in the middle of the circle as an offering was gone. From the smell of it, that was a bird’s doing.

He was going to find that thing and give it a bath.

The ferryman noticed the somber mood and strode over to ask what was the matter.

Foggy and Candace gestured at the shells.

“Oh dear,” the ferryman said. “Well seems that someone’s ruined a faery circle, hm?”

They nodded.

“Well, perhaps if we put it back together for the fae, they won’t be so disturbed, eh?”

Too late, Mr. O’Connell. The fae were already disturbed.

Foggy sighed at the shells, then looked out over the water. It was misty. The boats around them bobbed and rocked on the tide and the lighthouse looked like a mere silhouette of itself.

He puffed himself up, then pointed.

“Is that where the man with the red boat lives?” he asked.

“Who, now? Oh, Murdock?” the ferryman asked. “Oh yes, him and his boy. They took up from Mr. Rice, do you remember him?”

Yes. He was horrible. He used to throw himself out onto the rails in front of the great, turning lantern to scream profanity at the seals. He used to throw things, rocks and the like.

“Mr. Rice went away years ago,” Foggy pouted.

“Indeed he did. Left the place a right state,” the ferryman said. “Young Murdock’s had it to here with trying to fix the place up.” He gestured above his head, which Foggy didn’t get. He crossed his arms while Candace methodically picked up all the mussel shells. The ferryman noticed her and hurried over to have her put them back down out of respect for the fae.

Foggy glared out at the lighthouse.

Murdock, huh?

Well, a name was a start.

“Maybe we can lure him out,” he told Candace on the walk home. She swung their linked hands higher and higher.

“With a fish!” she decided.

Yeah, an offering should work. But where to put it? They had to be careful here to guide, not steer. Otherwise Mom and Dad would know immediately and there would be hell to pay.

“Or a hero,” Foggy thought out loud.

If the other selkie was meant to be saved by a hero, then step one would be finding said hero and leading them to the stone cross.

The problem was that Foggy didn’t know any heroes. He’d smelled one or two, but they had already been inducted into the _fae_. Their hero-ing days were done in the human world.

Candace let go of his hand to go stamp around in the morning dew on the overgrown grass on the side of the road. He watched her.

“We could sing?” Candace said, still stomping around.

“Sing?” he repeated.

“Yeah. Sing. Like, we can borrow Dad’s guitar and sing!”

Hm.

Well, it was something.

Dad was always happy for music to happen; he gave Foggy the key to the house and told him to be careful with the guitar’s strings. He said Candace could take her flute if she wanted to, it was in the second drawer in the dresser in his and Mom’s room.

Foggy took the key and then wrangled Candace away from the pumpkins out on the front porch.

“No time for pumpkins, human,” he told her.

She giggled and chased after. Foggy thought she was starting to kind of like the name-calling.

Every selkie had an instrument. Dad’s was a guitar. Mom’s was a drum. Foggy himself had a tambourine and they’d gotten Candace an honorary flute so she didn’t feel left out.

He fished the flute out from the knick-knacks his parents kept in their bedroom’s junk drawer, and, on the way out, picked his dad’s guitar up from the corner. He slung it over his shoulder and hiked back downstairs, calling for Candace to get a blanket for them to sit on.

He locked the door a couple minutes later and they trekked back to the store to hand the keys over.

Then they were off to make music.

“The selkie lives at the lighthouse,” Foggy explained as they climbed up the tallest hill they could find. “So we’ve got to play that way.” He pointed at the misty shape in the distance.

“That way,” Candace repeated, pointing herself.

“Yeah, okay. Hey, don’t drop that.” He pulled the cord around Candace’s flute over her head and then let her go tumble around on the blanket and whatnot. He settled down and stared out at the sea, trying to think of a song which the selkie might like.

Maggie heard the strumming and had to open a window to make sure she wasn’t imagining things.

Then she set her forehead against the wooden pane.

She did it again, harder this time for emphasis.

“Are you serious?” she asked the cracking wood.

It wasn’t working.

“Maybe he can’t hear it,” Candace said, putting down her flute. “Maybe it’s windy or something.”

“So we should play louder?” Foggy asked.

“Maybe?”

“How about not at all?” a new voice asked.

They both leapt a foot in the air and turned around to find a very grumpy nun. Foggy cut his eyes at her and opened his mouth to let her know that her presence was unwanted here when he felt it. It crashed over him like the crest of a wake.

His growl turned into a gape.

“You’re a selkie,” he said to the nun.

That was impossible.

“You’re making a racket,” the selkie-nun said, breezing past all niceties.

Candace popped up to Foggy’s defense.

“We’re making _music_,” she argued.

“Yes, and a racket at the same time. Go further towards shore if you want to make noise,” the nun sniffed. She turned around to hike back down the hill.

Foggy scrambled up.

“Wait!” he called. “You’re one of us! Why are you…” he trailed off. The nun’s habit bustled around in the wind, but she didn’t turn around.

Candace blew a raspberry after her. She looked over to Foggy.

“We should play _louder_,” she decided.

Foggy was confused. A selkie-nun? Was she a real nun? Or was she just wearing the clothes?

Maybe she was a spy. Maybe she was working for a hero.

“Foggy?”

He turned back to his sister.

“That’s suspicious,” he told her, pointing after the nun.

The other selkie didn’t seem to respond to any of the music, no matter how hard Foggy strummed or Candace blew.

It was frustrating.

It was like he was being purposefully annoying.

Foggy got sick of it and stood up. He set the guitar down and started folding up the blanket.

Fine.

If the selkie wanted to be all grumpy and cool off on his own. Whatever. Foggy had just been trying to be nice. He’d just been trying to save him from the cross-people and the selkie-nun.

“Come on, Candace, we’ve done our bit,” he snapped. He hauled both blanket and guitar back onto his shoulder and started to pick his way down the hill.


	6. where the wandering water gushes

Jack watched Matt plaster himself against the windows and tried not to laugh.

“It’s _music_,” Matt snapped at him.

“I believe you,” he promised.

“Sounds weird. Sounds like Mum’s music,” Matt further critiqued.

He wasn’t a fan of dulcet folk tones, this one. He tolerated them, but they were lullabies to him more than anything else and he wasn’t a baby anymore, Dad. God.

Matt wanted Jack to play 70s rock or current rap and pop and nothing in between. He had no patience or interest in the blues or jazz no matter how many times Jack tried to get him to appreciate them.

It would come with time, Jack decided.

“I wanna swim,” Matt told him, abandoning the windows to come cling to Jack’s waist.

“You just went swimming,” Jack told him. “Why don’t we try something else, huh?”

“Wanna swim!”

The peace couldn’t last forever, now, could it?

“Let’s paint,” Jack said. Matt lit right the fuck up.

He couldn’t see paint but he loved, loved, _loved_ to get his hands in it. Jack told the kid to go put on the jeans with all the holes in them—the ones with the tear on the bottom right hem, and then stood up to go get the buckets and trays and brushes.

The primer he’d put on the walls upstairs was dry. It was still taped off.

Matt came clattering up the stairs after him, using the cane properly this time. Jack waited at the top and then handed him the bucket keys and stirring sticks to hold onto.

Once the paint was doled out, he offered Matt a choice between fingers, brush, and roller. It didn’t matter too much at this point what he painted with; Jack would come back over it with a roller to even things out later.

Matt chose the brush and then they were off. Windows thrown open to chase out the fumes.

“Daddy, I want to swim,” Matt agitated an hour later, following him around the kitchen while he attempted to make lunch.

“Go wash your hands,” Jack told him.

Matt moaned and dragged his feet over to the sink.

“Want to swim,” he grumbled at the water pouring out of the faucet. Jack turned it off after minute. No need to waste water like that.

Matt whined and came over to latch himself around his waist again. Jack sighed.

Every time Matt went out with Grace, he came back wanting more time in the water. It would be a few days before the pull wore off. In the meantime, the main task was keeping him preoccupied.

“Daddy.”

“Baby,” Jack replied, shaking his head and going back to spreading butter on bread.

“_Daddy_.”

God, help him. This boy would be the death of him.

“You want to go watch tv, Matt?”

“Noooooo.”

Of course, not. No. That would be too easy.

“How about radio? Let’s put on a game, huh?”

“Want! To! Swim!”

This was going to be every conversation today. Every single one.

“Okay, the bathtub is unoccupied, go swim,” he sniffed.

Matt made a pained sound and hung himself over the back of one of the wooden kitchen table chairs. Jack would have thought he would be happy to have such a big home for once, but whatever the opposite of ‘happy’ was, he was that and a half.

“Want to swim,” Matt said pitifully to the chair’s seat.

“Matt,” Jack breathed. “Just—come here. Eat. Breathe. You’re gonna be okay.”

Matt pouted but slipped off the back of the chair.

“Dad. Music.”

“Yeah, you said that,” Jack replied. The manual in his hands was possibly the worst one he’d ever read. He looked at it, then looked at the sink. He flicked the flashlight on and frowned at the pipes.

“Dad.”

“Music?” he asked preemptively.

Matt didn’t say anything. Jack pulled himself out from under the sink to check on him. He’d settled himself in front of one of the windows, almost in a daze.

“Don’t feel good,” he said quietly.

Oh, shit. Jack scrambled up and went over to do the usual checks.

“Don’t feel good,” Matt told him even more emphatically.

“Where don’t you feel good?” Jack asked.

Matt made a soft of distress and wrapped himself up in arms and knees to hide.

Right. That kind of not feeling good.

“Come here, honey, let’s go take a nap,” he said.

He left Matt to sleep in his coat.

Grace said that it was a comforting place to be. She didn’t ever explain why Matt went through these cycles of nausea and distress, no matter how many times Jack asked. It probably had to do with the other selkies in nearby waters, he thought. But Grace refused to say anything about them either.

He didn’t understand.

He tried to, but Grace wasn’t open about these things. She told him that he wouldn’t get it and that he just had to trust her, and he did. Really, he did.

But Matt was his baby, too.

Other parents had books and doctors and shit to tell them what was normal and not normal and how to make things better.

Jack had a grumpy (though lovely) pintsized (but huge-spirited) nun.

He sat back down in front of the sink and picked up the manual again. Then he set it back down; his heart wasn’t in it.

Matt woke up around dinner time in better spirits. He didn’t want anything that smelled like fish. He scowled at the tuna sandwich (his actual favorite—come on, kiddo. Work with me, here) and Jack ended up watching him pick through granola for the dried cranberries.

He was 90% sure that you weren’t supposed to give most dog-like animals raisins or anything raisin-adjacent. But for all the fuss, Jack had yet to experience any adverse raisin-related instances.

“Those tasty?” he asked his kid.

Matt perked up and searched for him with his face. He missed but nodded more or less at Jack’s shoulder.

“I’m happy for you,” Jack sighed.

“Wanna swim.”

And we’re back.

He took Matty to shore in the morning. Figured some mainland time would be good for him. Church would be too, the kid loved church.

Jack unleashed him upon the Sunday School teacher and went to go have his own chat with God. He went to pick Matt up an hour later and was informed that Sister Maggie had taken him to the side for a moment.

Convenient.

He went on the hunt for his wife.

He found Grace fussing and Matt whining and trying to escape her clutches in one of the ancient hallways of the church.

“We good?” he asked to alert Grace of his presence. She froze and addressed him.

“Yes,” she lied. Like a liar.

“In the eyes of God, too?” he asked.

Matt felt his opening and ducked out from under Grace’s hands to come attach himself to Jack.

“Jack,” Grace warned.

“He was sick again yesterday,” Jack observed to no one in particular.

Grace pursed her lips and straightened herself out.

“A cold,” she said. “I’ll be seeing you. You,” she snipped at Matt. “Behave.”

Matt scowled. Jack looked down at him and then up after Grace’s skirts.

“Secrets?” he asked Matt.

Matt jerked his face up in his direction and beamed.

“Mum says the other selkie kids tried to give me an offering,” Matt explained as he picked through grass. Jack watched him, then looked out over the cove. It was windy, cold, and misty. The thistle around was starting to give up its purple hues.

“An offering,” he said.

“Music,” Matt told him. “They want to play.”

Ah.

“Do you want to go play?” Jack asked.

Matt picked more furiously at the grass and then shook his head.

“No? I thought you wanted friends?” Jack prodded.

Matt shook his head harder. Trying to bounce his brain around his skull or something.

“Did Mum say no?” Jack tried.

Matt’s head shaking slowed down. It wasn’t a nod, but it was still confirmation.

“Did she say why?”

It would really do everyone some good if Grace would just talk to Jack like a normal person. Having to go through this with Matt every time wasn’t efficient or fair.

“No selkies,” Matt mumbled.

“Yeah, that’s what she always says,” Jack sighed.

“No selkie friends,” Matt expounded.

Was this about the pod thing again? Grace was aware that Matt needed social skills, wasn’t she? Any friend groups would be good for him, human or selkie, whatever.

“How about faeries?” Jack asked drawled. “Are there rules on faeries, too?”

Matt giggled at him and then held out a hand.

“No rules for faeries,” he said when Jack took it.

“Well, damn. I guess that means we’ve gotta go find some, huh?”

Matt did well hiking. It had been hard at first, but they had a system now where Matt felt along with his stick while holding onto Jack’s arm. It was slow-going sometimes, when trails weren’t as well-maintained, but it worked. And more importantly, it let Matt get his water-fix in, in the form of dew.

If he grew up to be human, then he’d be happy to be able to hike around like this, so Grace reluctantly stayed mum on her no-doubt arm-length list of concerns.

Some of them, Jack was sure, were completely valid. For example, it was easier back home to do this, since there allegedly weren’t as many faeries and toes to step on. It was harder here in the old country since it seemed like there were faery circles every ten feet.

Matt loved those things.

He was drawn to them. He never went into the centers of them, but he nosed around them, petting mushroom caps and digging his fingers into the bark of ancient trees. He loved faery thorns, too. They didn’t have as many of these back home either, even upstate. Jack kept well away from them, didn’t want to chance a disturbance of whatever was tromping around inside or underneath them, but Matty was perfectly happy to have a go at climbing them or picking at the thorns. He never seemed to get caught on them.

It was like proof. Proof for Jack that his munchkin wasn’t quite the same as anyone else’s.

“Dad,” Matt said his way.

He blinked himself back and saw that his assistance was required.

“Bud, don’t climb things you can’t get off of,” he sighed.

Matt held out his arms patiently.

Jack took him out of the branches and set him back on the path. He spotted some old stumps ahead. They’d probably be hollowed out. Filled with things every fiber of his being told him not to let Matt touch.

“Rotten stumps at your two,” he said anyways. Matt lit up and grabbed at his hand for a guide.

And why not? Jack had hand sanitizer in his bag.

“Dad, I wanna say thank you,” Matt told him in the boat on the way home.

“To the faeries?” Jack asked.

“No. The friends.”

“The selkies?” Jack clarified.

Matt bobbed his head.

Huh.

Well, saying ‘thank you’ was probably allowed, right? That was just being polite.


	7. from the hills above Glen-Car

It was Jack’s understanding that selkies sang to each other, but bless him, Matt couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.

Grace was secretly horrified at that.

She told Jack once that a selkie’s song was one of the most important parts of them. They were the ones who were meant to sing to guide other _fae_ towards the Other World when the moment came.

Jack could only watch Matt warble a little and forget all the words of every song he’d ever heard and think, “Well, hope y’all aren’t puttin’ all your bets on this one.”

So singing was out, in terms of this gift business. But music in general wasn’t completely written off yet.

Grace had a shell that she blew into which raised unearthly notes. She’d held Matty in her lap when he was a toddler and had taught him more or less how to use it in the same way.

But again. Slight problem.

Matty had zero interest in this folky type of music. A flute to him was an instrument of chaos.

Jack wondered idly if piano lessons were maybe the way to go. Matt had a good ear, at least.

But no, that was not how selkies did things apparently. When he mentioned going to the local thrift store to find a secondhand drum or keyboard or something, Matt popped up and announced he was gonna _find_ one.

Bad, bad, bad.

There wasn’t even the slightest chance of this being good.

They ended up down by the rocks at the base of the hill the lighthouse was perched on. Jack watched Matt dig through pebbles and discarded shells with the focus of an astronaut preparing for lift off.

“Are you sure we can’t maybe go _find_ something at the thrift store?” he tried for the third time.

“No!” Matt barked back at him.

No, of course not. What was he thinking?

“’M gettin’ closer,” Matt announced.

Was he now?

Jack leaned back on his palms and held his breath.

Matt’s back stiffened. Jack’s eyebrows jumped.

Matt threw himself into digging into the sand. The sound of pebbles and shells grating against each other filled the air.

Matty dug like a seal. He led with the crown of his head and shoved dirt haphazardly out to the side so that it piled up under his arms.

Jack winced at the crunch of wet fingers scraping at hard rock and shell.

Bandaids, he told himself. Lots of bandaids later. And soap. And the mean, old, nasty, horrible fingernail brush.

What an evening they had ahead of them.

Matt popped back up and for a second, Jack thought he was shocked at himself.

“Daddy,” Matt snapped irritably, “There’s nothing here!”

Step two was another quick stop to the mainland to dig like a maniac on that beach instead.

“Uh, Murdock,” The ferryman said, sidling up next to him on the side of the road. “Is your boy okay?”

Matt hadn’t noticed the tide slowly coming in to lap at his shoes. He was busy.

Jack chewed on his tongue.

“One day I’ll know,” he told the ferryman.

Matt had worn himself out by the fourth hole. Jack went and dragged him out of the sand. He dumped him in the shallow water on the side of the dock for a second for good measure. His mama would be furious, but whatever.

Just because Matt wasn’t as good at swimming as a human didn’t mean he was helpless.

“Whaddya say, champ?” Jack asked him with his chin on his folded hands. The dock’s wood stank. “We done for the day?”

Matt treaded water for a moment, thinking. He frowned.

“No,” he said. “Thrift store.”

They could have come here first, was all that Jack was saying.

The lady at the till was highly amused at him and his sopping wet child. He didn’t want to put him down since he’d ruin the hardwood but Matt, as per usual, gave zero fucks about things he couldn’t see.

“Do you have anything vaguely instrumental?” Jack asked the lady over his whinging.

“We do,” she said. “For you or the seal pup?”

Matt perked up at being referred to so formally. Jack decided not to tell him it was a joke.

“The pup,” he said.

Matt rejoiced. He slapped at Jack’s shoulders in excitement.

“It’s a little big,” the lady said. “And a little old fashioned, but it’s still a nice piece.”

It was a stout, oval-shaped guitar. It had a circle of infinity knots carved into it just high of the middle.

“We call this a lute,” the woman explained. “It’s an ancient instrument. Not this one, obviously. One of the villagers used to make them; his daughter donated this one with his things the other day.”

So it was cursed, that’s what she was saying.

Matt dug his fingers into Jack’s jacket and just about vibrated.

Great. He already loved another cursed object. That was just what they needed.

“How much?” he asked the lady.

“No picking,” he told Matt and the new unwieldy toy as he set both down in the boat. Matt vibrated and petted at the thing.

“Oh!”

Jack nearly slipped off the damn dock.

“Would you look at that!” the ferryman swooned. “I ain’t seen one in years.”

Matt rattled like a baby pitbull in his direction. Jack almost wanted to ask the ferryman if he would buy the damn lute third-hand. He was not stoked for its incoming presence in his house.

“Can you play, wee one?” the ferryman asked Matt.

No.

Not even a lick. But he was so attached to it, Jack couldn’t deny it to him.

Matty never asked for anything these days. He hadn’t for a couple years now, since CPS had taken him away for a brief, but terrifying minute. All he asked for was for time in the water. And even then, it was hard going to get him to actually ask for it.

“Oh, well, I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it soon,” the ferryman said affectionately. Matt beamed at him.

Fully at him this time.

“Yeah, here’s to hoping,” Jack grumbled before hopping into the boat.

Matt took the lute to bed with him. Jack had to do some fun gymnastics to kiss him goodnight.

He closed the old white-washed door to Matt’s new room and headed back downstairs to the living room to take some deep breaths and let the day slip off him. He cleaned up the kitchen and stepped into the freezing cold bathroom for a shower.

Just as he shut off the taps, he heard it.

Soft and harmonious.

Pickings and chords.

He peeked out of the bathroom. It was coming from the staircase.

He pulled on his sweats and carefully made his way up the ancient steps and then, with the tips of his fingers, nudged Matty’s door open. He wasn’t in bed. He’d crawled onto the window sill. And he could play. Just like that.

He stopped and then turned around towards Jack.

“It’s thank you,” he explained.

“I know, honey,” Jack told him. He stepped further into the room and sat down on the bed. “Go on,” he encouraged. “It’s nice.”

Matt beamed at him.

“FOGGY.”

God, Candace.

Necessary much?

“FOGGY, MOM SAYS TO COME TO THE DOOR.”

What time was it even?

Foggy trekked down the stairs and grabbed the ornamental ball at the end of the bannister. Both of his parents were stood at the door. It was wide open.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

His dad turned around smiling and beckoned him over.

He took a step and stopped. A little ringlet of light floated past. Then another.

The dust motes had awoken.

He leapt over the last two stairs and ducked under his dad’s arm.

More lit dust motes floated around lazily on the porch. And far off in the distance, an orange and yellow light flickered like a star.

Foggy listened.

Music.

“The selkie!” He yelped.

Both of his parents laughed.

“Candace,” he called behind him. “He’s saying thanks!! He heard us!”

She screamed and rushed out of the hall with her blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a cape.

“A friend!” she screeched.

“A friend!” Foggy applauded with her.

“Good thing he’s here, then,” their Mom said. “Looks like it’s his turn to lead us home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is what I've got for now. Shorter chapters are much easier to write. Hope to have more soon ❤❤❤


	8. in the pools among the rushes

Foggy could barely wait until morning. He and Candace watched the horizon from their respective windows until it was more pink than blue and then went crashing down the stairs to ask Mom if they could please, please, _please_ go down by the water.

Foggy just knew that the selkie would be waiting there.

Mom and Dad threw their hands up eventually and said fine, but only after breakfast.

He and Candace crammed as much toast in their mouths as they could and then scrambled out the door. Dad called them back and hung Candace’s flute around her neck and shoved Foggy’s tambourine into his hand.

“Be nice,” he said with a warning finger, “Be intelligent, helpful, and _kind._”

Yeah, yeah, old man. Whatever you say. Bye!

“Why do I even bother?” Dad grumbled, waving them off.

They took the long way down, the one that wound through the hills, because the goal here was to not be seen by human people and the ferryman and his big nose would definitely be all up in their business if they went straight down into his territory by the docks.

The long way around peaked up higher than much of the city. Thistle grew thickly there and painted lady butterflies scattered at the thudding of Foggy and Candace’s feet. They found the old stone steps that led up to a kissing gate; they took the steps two at a time and just hopped over the old wood at the top altogether. Or rather, Foggy did. He had to go back when Candace didn’t quite make it.

Eventually, they found the topmost point of the cliff closest to the lighthouse. There was a faery thorn there. It bloomed pink in the spring and village folks sometimes left offerings under it. There was a carved wooden bowl at the foot of its truck for this purpose, but it was just filled with rainwater at the moment.

Foggy took Candace’s flute and made her stand clear while he dipped it and the very edge of his tambourine in it.

He held it back out to her.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yeah!”

“Okay, on my mark.”

He counted to four and started tapping. After eight beats, Candace joined in.

It wasn’t long before they heard a sharp cry somewhere down below the cliff’s edge.

They stopped the music and carefully shuffled over to the edge and sure enough, straight down there, standing a few years from the mouth of the little strip of land that connected the lighthouse to this side of the island, was the selkie.

He stood back, staring up at them.

The sandbar to the lighthouse behind him alternated between blue and pale beige in places as the tide washed over it.

“Wait there!” the selkie shouted their way.

Candace shrieked in delight. Foggy could have joined her but decided to play it cool.

“Will do!” he shouted back down.

The selkie spun around and grabbed something he’d laid on the driftwood nearby and then went stumbling and slipping and splashing over the sandbar. He fell a couple of times but got right back up. Foggy’s heart leapt once as he slipped on the side of the bar, facing deeper water, but he picked himself up and seemed to get his bearings more or less after that.

“Being a blind selkie must be hard,” he told Candace.

“Maybe he’s got better hearing,” Candace offered. “Like, super-hearing.”

Well, he had to have something. Otherwise he couldn’t run like that.

The selkie hauled himself up the steps to the lighthouse using his stick in a funny way. He got to the lighthouse proper and vanished inside, only to burst out again up by the great lantern with his lute in hand.

The lighthouse man stumbled out behind him, flailing around and saying something which Foggy knew from experience with his own obnoxious parents was all about being _careful_, for God’s sake.

The selkie whirled around used both hands to shove his dad back through the big glass door. He shut it behind him and snatched up his lute again. He seemed to look around a lot. Now that they were at the same height, it was a little easier to see his face.

“He’s trying to find us,” Foggy realized. He threw a hand in the air and shouted and in no time, the selkie’s face came their way again. He smiled wide and waved back.

“Play?” he called through the wind.

“Yeah!” Foggy shouted back. “You first?”

The selkie didn’t answer right away.

“Okay, me first,” Foggy called. He tapped Candace on the arm. “Same as before, okay?”

“Uh-huh,” She chirped.

Foggy took a breath and let it out, then started up the tapping again.

The selkie was a little rusty—Foggy could tell this was his first lute—but still pretty good. He had a really good sense of tone and he didn’t have a hard time harmonizing with Candace’s flute.

They played through a song that lit up the faery thorn behind him. It sent the gull spirits soaring and the call of some seals in the distance told Foggy that they appreciated the offering. The other selkie’s lute brought the dust motes alive and they glittered on the wind before swirling off towards the sea.

At the end of the song, they settled, then faded.

Foggy waited until the last notes had been carried away by the wind into the hills and thistle and out to sea before reaching back out to his and Candace’s new friend.

“My name’s Foggy,” he called. “What’s yours?”

“Matt!”

“Matt?”

“Yeah!”

“Can you swim?” Foggy shouted through cupped hands.

“Yeah!”

“Come swim with us!”

Matt paused and dropped his face a bit. He turned back towards the glass door and probably his dad behind it, then back to Foggy. Foggy could tell that he was shaking his head.

“Why not?” Foggy called. “Ask him! He’ll say yes!”

Matt’s dad had to know about the _fae_; he knew about the lute and he had to know that his son was a selkie. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could hide as a baby.

Even still, Matt wasn’t buying it. He shook his head hard enough that Foggy could see it this time.

“Can’t,” he called. “Come down to the cove! We can talk there!”

He ran back into the lighthouse and left Foggy and Candace standing up on the cliff.

“Maybe his dad’s mean?” Candace asked up at Foggy.

“I dunno,” Foggy said. “Only one way to find out, I guess.”

The cove down by the lighthouse was small and sandy and littered with driftwood. It was convenient for the lighthouse, Foggy was sure. If the lighthouse man didn’t feel safe going all the way to the docks at the mainland during a storm, he could probably come here and climb up to high ground to be safe. Once you got up to the cliffs, it was mostly flat and the walk to the village wasn’t that long, especially for adult legs.

By the time they crunched down the rocks to the sand, Matt was already there. Up close, Foggy could finally see that he had freckles across his face. He brought his stick with him everywhere, so it seemed.

“Hi,” Matt said, for real for the first time. He had a funny accent.

“Hi,” Foggy said. “Do you not want to swim?”

Matt smiled and shrugged.

“I’m not good at asking,” he admitted.

Foggy didn’t understand.

“Not good at asking what?” he asked.

“For things,” Matt said. “And Mum said I’m not supposed to talk to other selkies. She’ll smell it on me if I go swimming without her.”

Foggy was stumped. Gob-smacked.

_Not_ talk to other selkies? Why not?

“Aren’t you lonely?” he asked.

“A little,” Matt said. “But I’ve got my dad and he’s pretty good.”

Yeah, but like. Dads were _dads_, man. They weren’t friends.

“Is he mean?” Candace piped up. Matt tipped his head her way. He always wore dark glasses. These ones were wider and more square than the ones he’d had on the other day at the docks. They hid his eyes completely.

“My dad? No, he’s not mean. He’s just human and confused a lot,” Matt said.

“So you’re a half-selkie!” Candace chirped. “Like our parents.”

Matt cocked his head again like a dog.

“I guess? Mum’s a full selkie,” he said. “She was born here, but she came to New York and met my dad. They had me in the river.”

“A river?” Foggy said, trying not to be disgusted. “That sucks. There aren’t river selkies here anymore, it’s too hard to be by yourself like that for so long.”

Matt looked a little shy.

“Is it really that bad?” he asked in a small voice.

Yikes. Foggy backpedaled. This was what Dad was talking about. ‘Be nice, be kind, intelligent, and helpful,’ his voice echoed in Foggy’s head.

“It’s okay,” he rushed to say, “You’re here now, right? That means we can help you; you don’t have to be alone all the time anymore. Hey, you go to school under the cross, don’t you?”

Matt seemed even more nervous than before. He rolled his stick between his fingers.

“I dunno if there’s a cross outside, but I go to the Catholic school if that’s what you mean?” he said.

Oh, right. He wouldn’t be able to see it, would he?

“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” Foggy said. “I felt you in there; that place is bad news, though. Maybe you should ask your dad if you can transfer to our school. They’re nicer there.”

Matt stood up straighter and got all serious.

“I can’t go to the village school,” he said.

Foggy was taken aback.

“Why not?” he asked.

“They’re not friendly to people like me,” Matt pouted. “They said I was too expensive to have because of my books; they didn’t want to pay for a Para for me.”

“What’s a ‘para?’” Foggy asked.

“It’s someone who helps me write and stuff,” Matt sniffed. “I can’t see, so I need books and assignments in braille or read out loud and I need help writing stuff down sometimes. But the village school said they couldn’t afford any of that, they told us we’d have to pay for some of it ourselves. The Catholic school said they would help, though, so I go there instead.”

Oh.

Well. That made sense.

“The nuns and priests don’t try to convert you?” Foggy asked. Matt frowned at him.

“Why would they convert me? I’m already Catholic.”

WHAT.

“You can’t be Catholic,” Foggy said. “Catholics don’t believe in the _fae_. And you are_ fae_.”

“Some of them do,” Matt pointed out. “My Mum’s Catholic and _she’s_ _fae_ and she gets along just fine. My dad’s Catholic, too, and he believe in all kinds of _fae_. He wouldn’t touch faery circles if you paid him. He even leaves milk out sometimes for the brownies.”

Woah.

They were like the old monk, then.

That was amazing.

“Your Da believes in selkies, then?” Foggy asked.

“Well, yeah. He’s surrounded by ‘em.”

“So why won’t he let you swim with us?”

Matt crossed his arms and the wind blew his hair all over.

“It’s not that he won’t,” he said. “He probably wouldn’t mind. It’s Mum that’s the trouble. She says I’m not supposed to shift without her; I need a guide in the water still.”

“I can be your guide,” Foggy pointed out. “I guide Candace when we go out all the time, don’t I? She can’t open her eyes in saltwater, it hurts her too bad.”

Candace hummed in agreement. Matt wasn’t convinced.

“Just go ask your dad,” Foggy pleaded. “We’ll stay in the cove, I’m sure it’ll be okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just for the record, Maggie, Foggy, and Candace have strong Donegal accents.
> 
> Matt has a softer mash up between Maggie's accent and Jack's hard-core New Yawk drawl. His leans either way depending on who he's talking to.


	9. that scarce could bath a star

Jack didn’t know what to do. He honestly, truly didn’t know what to do here.

On the one hand, he was thrilled that Matt was asking him (actually asking him!) for something that was not a bath in the bay; on the other hand, Grace was terrifying when her wrath got the best of her--and it _would_ get the best of her if he let Matt out to go swim with the other selkies without her knowledge.

Matt didn’t try to find his face. He waited, though, for what was the inevitable in his head.

Argh.

Compromise. Jack needed a compromise, and quick.

“Why don’t you invite Foggy and Candace up here?” he tried. Matt lifted his face a little. “Maybe next time, we can talk about swimming, but for now, let’s play on land.”

Matt edged forward a little bit, all hopeful.

“Really?” he asked.

“Really,” Jack told him with a certainty that he didn’t feel.

“Daddy, you’re lying,” Matt giggled.

“I’m terrified of your mama,” Jack said, “There, is that a lie?”

Matt giggled harder.

“No,” he said.

“Great, so. There we are. I’m sayin’ yes, so hurry up before the fear gets ahold of me and changes my mind.”

Matt beamed at him and was immediately off, rattling and clacking his way down the stairs.

The selkie kids were adorable. The older one was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with a shock of nearly white sun bleached hair on the top of his head and a spray of freckles across only one half of his face. He was a little chubby and had white eyelashes, which his little sister almost shared. Hers were blond, but she was clearly more human than her brother. Her skin was tanned where his was pale and her hair straw-colored and wild. She was very, very proud of the flute that was looped around her neck.

They both clearly already adored Matt and Matt was more than happy to caper around with them, getting into seven kinds of trouble around the lighthouse.

Jack hadn’t seen him this happy in years, since before CPS and the blindness. Grace told him that Matt was pretty happy out in the sea, but Jack hadn’t gone out with the two of them since Matty was a baby and his paranoia over the drowning of said baby had been more than he could cope with.

He tried to give the three of kids their space—only intervened with the rough-housing started. No one was hurt, but Matt was a feisty little bugger with a boxer dad and Jack couldn’t afford to be paying for other kids’ broken teeth and doctor’s visits.

He heard Foggy, the bleached-out kiddo, teaching Matt some different chords on the lute a little later in the evening and on a second pass by the room, he heard all three kids chanting the lyrics of a song, with Foggy and Candace cackling at just how bad Matt’s singing voice was.

“Okay, maybe you just play for now,” Foggy told him through the giggling. “Maybe your hero will sing for you.”

A hero, then?

What did that mean?

“It means,” Grace said, with her forehead grinding against Jack’s, “That I can no longer be a nun because I have to _murder you_. One rule, Jonathan. There is one rule.”

This was fair.

“They didn’t go swimming, girl,” he pointed out. “It’s fine.”

“It’s bad enough that he’s been chosen to lead; now he’s going to be getting ideas about pods,” Grace bemoaned. “There are no pods in New York, Jack. There aren't herds. There's nothing besides _gangs_ in the harbor, do you hear me? Groups of maybe a dozen seals each with bugs up their asses about boundary lines that never move than two inches. He gets involved in pods here and he’ll try to get involved with gangs back home.”

Matt ignored them both to hum off-tune while picking at the lute.

“He didn’t swim with them, Grace. They’re just friends,” Jack promised, placing his hands on hers. “He needs friends.”

She scowled but couldn’t argue with that one.

Even Grace had friends—other nuns, community service providers, organizers, activists. She had a wide circle of people back home, just as Jack did with the neighbors and the gym guys.

“Humans,” Grace finally said a little desperately, “He needs human friends.”

“Candace is human,” Matt said softly.

Grace froze and looked over to him and the lute. Jack thought for a second she might take it from him and tell him not to play anymore, but she didn’t do that. She sucked in a breath that brought her shoulders up to her ears, then let it out and dropped them. She left Jack to go kneel down in front of their son.

He deferred to her. Handed over the lute without being asked.

“Sorry, Mum,” he mumbled. “Won’t do it again. Sorry.”

Jack’s heart hurt.

“Grace,” he said.

She took the lute and set it aside, then settled down to sit with her legs crossed.

“Little one,” she sighed, “I know it’s hard to understand, but we are not here in this land for very long. These friends you are making—they won’t come home with us. I don’t want you to miss them when we leave. The bonds that we make with other _fae_ are different from those that we make with humans, Matt. They will stay with you; you will always be connected. You will always feel your friends’ sorrow.”

Matt flexed his fingers and sniffed.

“But it’s lonely,” he whispered.

“Come here, selkie-child,” Grace said. She pulled him into her arms and closed her eyes. She rocked back and forth slowly. “There will be other _fae_ to be friends with,” she murmured to him. “There are more heroes in New York than anywhere on earth. You will find one, I promise, just like I did, and things will be less lonely. They will stay with you while they are human, and if you choose to remain a selkie, then they will stay with you in the After, and your bond will never be forgotten.”

She pulled Matt out of her shoulder and smoothed thumbs under his eyes.

“You may play with these other selkies,” she said. “But you may _never_ shift in their company, do you understand?”

Matt wiped at his own face and nodded. He cleared his throat.

“Is Dad a hero?” he asked.

Grace’s face softened.

“He is my hero,” she said.

Jack’s eyes burned and he almost had to look away from the emotion.

“I’ll find a hero?” Matt asked. “Even if I can’t see them?”

“You don’t follow your eyes to your hero,” Grace explained. She tapped at his nose. “You follow this. And your heart. Don’t worry about the eyes. And don’t shift with the others, yes?”

“Yes, Mum.”

“Alright. Up you get. No more crying. Dad’s gonna start crying.”

Rude. He already was crying. He’d been crying for the last fifteen minutes, thanks.

They developed a new routine over the next week. Jack took Matt to school; he then went to the hardware store and bought whatever new hellish object the library of manuals on the floor of the living room told him to buy, then he went to the library and checked out yet another demonic manual. After that, he headed back to attempt to apply both hellish object and demon manual to the lighthouse and usually by the time he was good and frustrated with that, it was time to pick Matt up from school. He rowed back, hiked up the cliffs behind the school and convent and played ‘Where the hell are the children today?’ until he heard giggling. And, once mournful goodbyes had been said, he tossed Matt back in the boat and they went home to eat, sleep, and then do it all again the next day.

Matt didn’t ask him a single time to be allowed to go swim.

Instead, he brought him bits of driftwood and shells etched with overlapping ringlets of circles, which Jack took to be pieces of selkie-art. He drilled holes in the tops of those that he could and let Matt spend his time stringing them together into windchimes that he could touch and play with and hang around his room, safely off the floor.

By the end of September, Jack thought maybe they were finally settling into the new place.


	10. we seek for slumbering trout

“This is Halloween, Halloween, Halloween,” Candace sang while sprinkling Foggy and Matt with grass she’d ripped up from one of the rotting posts in front of them.

“Stop that,” Foggy snapped at her. “You’re insulting the _fae_.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Maaaatt, are you insulted?”

Matt tucked his feet up onto the bench and smiled into the tops of his knees.

“_See?”_ Candace goaded. She dropped down and popped back up with a fistful of wildflowers which she picked through for the purple ones. These she began to tuck in Matt’s hair. “It’s an offering,” she told him.

“Thanks,” Matt said.

“Don’t encourage her,” Foggy sniffed at them both.

“This is Halloween, Halloween, Halloween,” Candace chanted, quieter this time.

“Is Halloween fun here?” Matt asked out of nowhere.

Foggy looked up from where he was digging a hole in the ground under their claimed bench with his shoe.

“It’s alright, I guess,” he said, “Selkies don’t usually participate, though. We got other things to do. Candace stays with our auntie and cousins and they go off trick-or-treating and whatever.”

“HALLOWEEN,” Candace yipped behind them, now hurling grass and flowers straight up into the air. “HALLOWEEN.”

“Stop that,” Foggy barked at her.

Matt laughed into his knees. He was always too nice to Candace; he was spoiling her. Making her think she could just go around doing things to people and not get told off for it.

“Have you gone trick-or-treating?” Foggy asked him. “It’s a big American thing, isn’t it?”

“It’s not safe to go in my neighborhood back home,” Matt explained. “But my dad takes me to the gym where all the guys dress up and our church does a big party. It’s just as good.”

Foggy hummed and looked out over the cove in front of them. Then he sat up.

“Matt,” he asked, “Have you ever been to the Other Place?”

Matt stopped rolling his stick between his hands and put his feet down again.

“Once,” he said.

“Only once?” Foggy asked.

“Yeah.”

“How could you have gone only once?” Candace and her busy-body nose piped up, suddenly leaning between the two of them on the bench. “You gotta go every year, don’t you? Or you’ll get sick?”

Matt shrugged.

“Mum took me when I was a baby,” he said, “Maybe she took me more, I dunno. I don’t remember.”

Candace rocked on her feet.

“Foggy and Mom and Dad go every year,” she said. “Foggy always comes back super, super, _super_ pale. ‘Cause his birth mom was like, all white.”

Matt paused and turned Foggy’s way.

“Birth mom?” he asked.

Foggy sat back and tapped his heels in the dirt.

“Yeah, our mom is my step-mom, but she’s been my mom since I was really little, so she’s more my mom than the lady who had me,” he said. “The lady who had me is a harp seal.”

“She’s _mean_,” Candace added in case Matt hadn’t figured that out by now from Foggy’s tone. “She comes back sometimes just to be mean to Dad and Foggy.”

Well, she didn’t mean to be mean, Foggy hoped. It was more that she’d never wanted a pup to begin with and had ended up having him anyways by accident. She was a big shot lawyer who spent most of her time travelling between Dublin and Norway; she didn’t have time for pups or babies or mates or anything like that. She didn’t like them all that much either. Foggy thought that when she came to see him, the way she did every other year or so, it was mainly instinct that drove her to do it.

Thankfully, those visits never lasted long. She usually burst into the house to inspect him and ask him and Dad if his coat was darkening yet or if he was getting any spots, and then once she was satisfied after checking him over once or twice, she’d leave and that would be that until the next time.

She didn’t like Mom. And she didn’t like Candace. She didn’t like humans in general, actually. She just liked the offerings they gave her went she did law-things for them. She was very good at doing law-things. She got a lot of offerings that way.

“My mum’s like that sometimes,” Matt said to his knees.

Foggy perked up. Matt almost never talked about his folks. Sure, he mentioned them, but it was usually just his dad he did any real describing for.

“Is she a harp seal, too?” Foggy asked.

“No, she’s just—she’s just—uh.” Matt didn’t seem to know how to describe her.

“She’s not nice?” Candace asked like a bull in a china shop. If the back of the bench hadn’t been in the way, Foggy would have rammed an elbow into her ribs.

“She’s not _not_ nice,” Matt explained. “She works really hard to help a lot of other people and kids; it’s just that she never wanted one of her own. I think she really just wanted to be with my dad, but then I was born and things got too complicated. So she doesn’t live with us anymore.”

Foggy could understand that.

“Maybe you need a step-mom,” he said. “The stories people tell about them aren’t always true, you know. My step-mom’s really nice and she’d never make me into a Cinderella or anything like that.”

Matt got quiet and rubbed a cheek against his shoulder. Foggy backtracked.

“Or not,” he said cheerfully. “Maybe your mum’s just fine as she is. Hey, is she gonna help you lead us on Halloween?”

Matt startled a little out of his quietness.

“I dunno,” he said. “Maybe? I should probably ask her; it’s not like I know the way.”

“You should get your dad to do it,” Candace decided.

Foggy laid into her with the flattest face he could muster.

“What?” she said. “Humans can probably do it. You wouldn’t know ‘cause you never give ‘em a chance.”

Yeah, right. Sure. That was really what was going on here.

“Candace wants to be a selkie,” Foggy told Matt.

“I’m _gonna_ be,” Candace informed him. “You just wait.”

Matt smiled at her.

“You can have my selkie-ness,” he told her.

She lit up like a lightbulb and pumped a fist in victory. Foggy didn’t know how he felt about that.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “You wouldn’t give it up, would you?”

Matt kept his head turned down towards his feet and squeezed at his stick. He didn’t say anything.

“Matt,” Foggy said more urgently this time, “You wouldn’t—you can’t give it up. You know that right?”

Matt didn’t answer again.

Foggy’s heart felt like it was fluttering in his chest.

“I’m only half,” Matt finally said after what felt like forever. “I get to choose what I’ll be one day. And it’s really hard to be a selkie in New York.”

“So live here,” Foggy said, suddenly breathless.

“I can’t,” Matt said.

“Why not?”

“I just can’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

Matt bit his lip and then set his feet flat on the ground and stood up.

“I’m gonna go home,” he said. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

He left them slowly, tapping his stick along the dirt road to make sure there weren’t any potholes or puddles where he was about to step. Candace watched him go with her hair whirling around into Foggy’s own.

“I didn’t mean it, Foggy,” she muttered when Matt was mostly down the hill. “I won’t take Matt’s selkie-ness, you know that, right?.”

He knew.

It wasn’t possible.

But Matt becoming human was.

He stood up and dusted off the back of his jeans.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go home for now. He’s probably just feeling homesick or something. He won’t really give it up.”


	11. and whispering in their ears

Maggie was throwing sheets over the clothesline outside when Sister Rose came over to tell her Matty was asking for her.

That was unusual. He normally kept his distance until she called him or until he was in trouble.

She clipped the sheets in place, thanked the sister, and started to weave her way through the garden.

“He looks like you, Sister,” Sister Rose said from behind her.

Maggie felt every hair on the back of her neck stand up on end. Prickly, like pins and needles.

“I’ve been told,” she said as calmly as possible back.

Sister Rose didn’t answer that. Maggie tried to breathe normally as she went on her way down the hill.

Matty was waiting for her by the stone wall at the bottom of the hill, by the road. He’d climbed up onto a couple of the stones that jutted out at the bottom on the other side. She could tell from the lack of cane that it had been dropped into the dust on the other side.

“It folds for a reason,” she observed when she came to a stop.

Matt brought his face up her way, searching for her voice.

“Mum, can we swim soon?” he asked.

This again.

“We already swam this week,” she reminded him. “No more swimming for now.”

He turned his face back down towards the stones and the moss crawling its way into pillows on top of them. She didn’t like him up there on a dry wall.

“Get down,” she said.

He followed the direction and disappeared briefly to pick the dusty stick up from the ground.

“What’s this about, Matthew?” she asked him.

He shook his head.

“Nothing, just wanted to swim,” he said in a small voice. “I’m going home. Bye.”

Lies.

The boy was telling lies, now.

“Wait there,” she sighed.

Matt held her elbow as they walked, pausing only occasionally to tap around a dip or tiny ocean along the side of the road.

She couldn’t read much into his silence. Never had been able to.

“Dad tells me you like your lute,” she said once they were about half a mile from the convent, going around the long way home apparently. “I thought folk songs were for babies.”

“Foggy’s teaching me how to play better,” Matt mumbled. He stopped and stooped suddenly to catch a frog before it leapt into the street. She never knew how he could notice these things and then get ahold of them so quickly. He held it up to her. It croaked.

Yuck.

She took it and set it in the hollow of the sheep gate on the other side of the road, then made Matt rinse his hands with her in the bitty ocean on the side of the road. It was mostly rain water. Better that than frog germs.

Matt took her hand proper when they set off again.

“Mum,” he said as they approached the trail down towards the cove and the lighthouse.

She waited. Matt tipped his face up at her.

“Will you help me?” he asked.

“Help you what?”

He fidgeted.

“Lead people,” he said, turning away from her to rub his cheek against the shoulder of his sweater.

Ah. Yes.

“Of course,” she said.

Matt’s shoulders shuddered in a sigh of relief.

“Okay,” he said to his sneakers. They were peeling along the edges again already. “Thank you. Can we go _home-_home after that?”

Oh, little one.

“Not right after,” she said. “But only ten months later. Not even a year.”

“I want to go home,” Matt murmured. “I miss home.”

Lord, how she felt for this child.

“Me ,too,” she said. “And Dad. But we said we’d stay a whole year, remember? So, a year we shall stay.”

Matt curled and uncurled his fingers in hers. Then let go of her hand and lifted his face towards hers.

“I don’t want a step-mom,” he sniffed out of absolutely nowhere.

She almost recoiled.

“What are you talking about now?” she asked maybe a little more brusquely than necessary.

Matt shook his head violently.

“Who’s put these ideas into your head, son?” she demanded.

He swallowed a sob and withdrew into himself. Quiet again, arms tucked into his chest.

She didn’t understand.

“Small one,” she crooned, more gently. “Come here, why are you thinking about this?”

No. Nope. He wasn’t coming. She’d had her chance.

Aigh.

Children.

“Matthew,” she sighed. “No one is upset right now but you. So come back here and tell me how to help.”

Matt’s shoulders said for him that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening.

“Want to go home,” he whispered.

Maggie looked out to the lighthouse. Jack wasn’t out by the lantern, although he’d been sorting through different fluids he thought might clean off some of the minerals calcifying on its surface.

“Alright,” she said eventually, “Give us a hand, we’ll go home.”

Jack was busy glaring at the guts of the lantern’s turning mechanism when she pushed open the door to let Matt tear off out of her grip.

“Jonathan,” she said once Matt’s bedroom door had shut. “Come outside. We need to talk.”

“What in God’s name are you tellin’ the boy?” she hissed outside on the steps. “He comes to me, cryin’ about step-moms. You could have at least told me, Jack.”

Jack’s face seemed frozen in disbelief.

“Haven’t said a damn thing about step-moms to him, Grace,” he said lowly. “I don’t know where he’s got that from.”

Maggie looked him up and down, crossed arms and all.

“Are you seein’ someone?” she asked.

“You already know the answer to that,” He snapped.

“You could—”

“I’m not talkin’ about this.”

“Jack.”

“Margaret.”

The invocation of her full name by her mate felt like someone behind her, wrapping their heat into her back and shoulders.

“You could,” she repeated, defeated. “Matt needs a mother, Jackie.”

“He already has one,” Jack said. “I’ll talk to him. Thanks for bringing him home.”

The selkie children, she realized on the way back down the cliffs to the convent. That’s where Matty was getting these ideas.

Damn them.

And even if it wasn’t the children, no doubt the adults would be chattering away, too. Trying to figure out who would leave such a young pup out to play to the island on his own.

If she left it for too much longer, some well-meaning cow would come along and try to adopt Matty out of the goodness of her heart and that would scar him forever.

Mm, no.

No more of this. Boundaries needed to be laid.

Jack was understandably baffled when she wrenched the door open the following Saturday at breakfast.

“Matthew,” she sniffed, straightening herself out and taming her skirts. “Get your coat.”

Matt dropped everything and cheered. Jack jolted to try to catch the shower of Cheerios before they went everywhere and flapped his mouth while Matt scrambled out of his chair and haphazardly up the stairs.

“It’s daytime,” Jack finally managed at Maggie. She cocked a hip and made her skirts swing with it.

“And?” she said.

“And? _And?_” Jack looked frantically after Matt and then back to her. Realization blossomed across his face. “Grace—Mags, _no._ This isn’t—they can’t know, you said so yourself.”

“They’re selkies,” Maggie sniffed. “They have their own secrets to keep. They’ll keep mine, so help them God.”

Jack dropped the cereal into one of the bowls on the table and held palms out to her.

“Matty, think about _Matty_,” he emphasized. “If the villagers know—”

“The convent already knows about the both of us,” Maggie sniffed. “Some of them seem to know even more than that.”

Jack winced.

“Okay, but the _villagers_, Mags.”

“The only villagers who will know will be selkies and they will keep their mouths shut if they know what’s good for them.”

“Grace,” Jack pleaded.

She heaved her shoulders and dropped her arms.

“Jack, they’re making assumptions and confusing him right now,” she said. “They’ll see me eventually anyways when I guide Matt on the 31st. At least this way, they’ll know he’s not alone.”

“Girl, you’ll get kicked out of your order if someone opens their gob,” Jack reminded her. “There’s no need to risk that. Just let them talk. That’s all it is, anyways.”

She pursed her lips.

“I know what I’m doing,” she said.

“So do I,” Jack replied.

He set his brow and crossed his arms. Tipped his chin up even.

“You want to play this game, human?” she asked him.

Yeah, that’s right. Look at those second thoughts.

“DADDY.”

Enter Further Pressure from stage right. Thank you, Further Pressure.

Matt slung himself and his coat over Jack’s shoulder; Jack steadied him and carried on glaring.

“I’m not agreeing with you,” he said firmly. “I am _dis_agreeing with you. I want this on the record. I think this is a bad idea.”

“Your concerns have been noted,” Maggie said. “Matty, come here. Daddy’s cranky ‘cause he can’t swim.”

Jack full-on mugged this time.

Matt pawed at his face in concern.

“You want to come?” he asked. He jerked towards Maggie. “Can Dad come?”

“Not with that attitude,” she said, holding her arms out and smugly wrapping Matt up in them when he wriggled out of Jack’s grip.

“Grace,” Jack growled. “Bad. Idea.”

“I take no orders from humans,” she stated.

“I take no orders from selkies,” Jack snapped back.

Maggie gasped and Matt popped his head up to her in alarm.

“Do you hear this, little one?” she hissed. “He spurns us.”

Matt jerked Jack’s way, horrified.

“Mags,” Jack moaned into his hands.

“_Spurns_ us,” Maggie moaned over him. “The nerve of him, Matty. The pride. Have you ever seen such hubris?”

“No,” Matt chirped, completely honestly.

“Over your own _son_, Jonathan,” she languished.

“For fuck’s sake. Whatever. Get out, the both of youse. I’ve had to here with you _fae_ for now,” Jack finally scowled, throwing his hands in the air. Maggie smirked. Matt pressed in close to her. She felt him searching for her and touched his shoulder in acknowledgement.

“We can go swim now?” he asked.

Yes.

Yes, they could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just fyi, seal moms are known to both abandon and adopt young pretty frequently, so I'm assuming that selkies are the same way. Mama selkies who hear Matt playing all by himself might assume that he's alone out there and so might take it upon themselves to go take him under their flippers. 
> 
> Maggie explains why this might be problematic for Matt's particular situation in the next chapter.


	12. give them unquiet dreams

She changed out of the habit. Swiped some of Jack’s clothes and then took Matt’s coat with him back into Jack’s bedroom.

“We are not shifting today,” she told him as she folded it back into its home in the dresser drawer. “We are just swimming.”

The coat had been a prop for dramatics.

“Swimming,” Matt repeated after her.

She leaned out of Jack’s bedroom.

“Jonathan,” she snapped, “Where have you hidden it?”

Jack and his bad attitude chose not to answer.

“Daddy is a very annoying human sometimes,” Maggie told Matt.

“_Daddy_,” Jack clarified as he passed them in the doorway with his arms full of a laundry basket, “Is the only reasonable person in this house.”

Arguable.

“Shell,” she demanded.

“Wherever you put it last,” Jack huffed.

“Lute,” Maggie told Matt. He perked up and bounced off to go get it. She put her hands on her hips and watched Jack’s shoulders as he irritably folded socks.

“Jackie,” she said.

“I haven’t touched it, sweetheart, I dunno where it is,” he said.

“_Jack_.”

He sighed and put down the socks to turn around. She waited.

“I just—I don’t want you to lose everything because of some people gossipin’,” Jack admitted. “We came all out this way and—I know you’re trying to do what’s right for Matty, Grace. I know that, I just don’t understand _why_ it has to be this way. So someone’s talking about moms to him; big deal. They do the same in the city, hon. Why is it such a fuss now?”

She crossed her arms in his flannel shirt.

“Because now they’re my kind,” she explained. “And there are other selkie women out there who might think he’s been abandoned, Jack. He’s been picked to lead, but that doesn’t mean he’s got to touch the Other Side. If they try to take him as theirs, they’ll push him over that line and he won’t have a choice anymore about whether or not he comes back. I don’t want to take that risk. He’s getting enough energy from the lute, honestly. And his human friend has given him offerings. He doesn’t need anything else for now.”

Jack didn’t quite understand and she didn’t expect him to. The mechanics of existence weren’t for him to understand, only for him to accept.

“Shell,” she said lightly.

Jack sighed.

“In the box,” he relented.

“Thank you,” she told him.

“Are you guys going far?” he asked, watching her as she found the box with the piece of pelt she’d given him eight years ago in it. It was wrapped around the spiky spirals of her flute.

“Going for a hike,” she said. “There’s a lake in the forest.”

Jack sat down on the bed.

“You both need better shoes,” he said.

Maggie touched his cheek.

“Don’t worry, I’ve already got it covered,” she said. She smoothed a thumb over his cheekbone. It had been ages since she’d seen it this healed over. “Wait for us.”

Jack scoffed.

“Do I look like I’m goin’ anywhere?”

“DADDY.” Matt was beside himself for this adventure. Jack chuckled.

“Yes, champ?”

“Imma find you a rock.”

“Oh, perfect, make it a good one,” Jack said.

Matt bobbed his head gravely, then got a hold of Maggie’s hand.

“Let’s _go_,” he said, pulling.

“You heard the man,” Jack said with a shrug. “Go on. I’ll see you two tonight.”

“Mum.”

“Hm?”

“Your head’s different.”

“Hair’s out.”

“Out?”

“Yes. Come here, I want you to hold this. We need to hike, do you know how to hike?”

Matt took her elbow and nodded. He shook out his stick with the other hand.

“Ready,” he told her.

The way to the pool wasn’t so far as it was winding. Much of it was uphill, as was to be expected. The soles of Maggie’s shoes slipped against the grass and rock. It was too wet to be hiking like this. Matt did a little better with the help of his stick, although he was also distracted by the rush of the forest.

Jack took him out of the city every so often to let him go trip over every root in the state, but this was a different kind of forest.

“There are spirits here,” she warned him, “Be respectful.”

“Wolves?” Matt asked her.

“No wolves,” she scolded.

“Bears,” Matt decided instead.

“No bears.”

“Dragons?”

For God’s sake.

“Leprechauns,” she told him. “We’re going to go see one.”

Matt slipped on dead leaves but came back up twice as motivated.

“Leprechauns??” he repeated.

“That’s what I said. We need better shoes.”

“Leprechauns!!”

That’s it. She was throwing out all his books. He needed proper stories, this one did.

She hadn’t been in this area since she was fourteen, but it still felt familiar to her the way the island itself did. She was impressed actually. The clearing was covered in clover even this far into autumn.

The hut she remembered was still there. Still dripping with moss and lichen. Now, however, several bushes of hydrangeas rustled against each other around its perimeter. If Matt had been able to see, she would have drawn his attention to the reds, oranges, and browns of the eyes on the barrels stuffed in by the hydrangeas. They were the wings of moths all gathering around the lip of the barrels for a quick drink.

Matty couldn’t see, though, so she listened for something which might also teach him about the spirit of this place.

It was hard, for sure.

“Well, hello there, selkie.”

Matt instinctively tucked himself into her side. She laid a hand over him and turned to see the leprechaun. He was tall as ever with his slouchy red hat.

“Hello,” she said. “We’re looking for shoes.”

The leprechaun smiled as he leaned against his doorframe.

“Shoes I’ve got,” he said.

His knuckles were covered in gold rings.

“What’ll you give me for them?” he asked.

“A name,” Maggie said.

The leprechaun pushed off from the doorframe.

“Come on in then.”

Matty didn’t like this man who picked him up and set him on the counter without his permission. And that was too bad for him because the leprechaun already _loved_ him.

“Such tiny feet,” he said, pulling Matt’s battered sneakers off to his great consternation. “This one’s skinny for a selkie pup, eh?”

“He’s half,” Maggie said. “His father’s name is Jonathan.”

The leprechaun made a sound of interest.

“Your mate, then?” he asked. “This your first born?”

“His name is Matthew.”

“Ah, _Maidi__ú._”

“Matthew,” Matt corrected.

The leprechaun laughed and picked up his tools to measure Matt’s feet. Matt flinched away from him. The leprechaun let him, then glanced up and noticed the lute.

“Do you play, selkie-child?” he asked.

Matt stopped trying to bat his hands away from his pale soles and nodded.

“Play us something, then. It’ll help pay for your ma’s boots.”

Matt turned his face towards Maggie for guidance.

“Go on,” she told him.

The leprechaun was mostly interested in humans, towards the other _fae_ he was more or less apathetic. That said, he liked Matt’s music very much and sat still to watch the spirits lift from the wood and tools in his workshop. The dust motes sprang out of hiding to float in the air like dandelion seeds.

After observing this for a while, he stood up and opened a cabinet with two sets of brown leather boots in it. They were bound to the soles by thick red cord.

Maggie knew already that they would fit to a T.

Matty did not.

Matty also did not want this strange creep to touch his feet any more than he already had. And once this trial had been overcome, he was confused with shoes that fit him properly for once.

“They’ll grow with you,” the leprechaun promised. “Provided you don’t go around dunkin’ ‘em into too much trouble.”

He gave Maggie her own set and took her flats as payment.

“He’s very sweet,” he told Maggie. “But he won’t stay that way for long. The name of his father has written his fate for him.”

She knew.

“I’ll see you in a couple of weeks here, selkie-child,” the leprechaun said, finally letting Matt down from the counter.

“Say thank you,” Maggie told him.

“Thank…you?”

Good work.

Now off to find the lake.

Matt got used to his new boots pretty quickly and that was only a problem in that he was very excited about jumping around in piles of fallen leaves in them.

This led to slipping and that led to sliding and that led to scraped up hands that Matt couldn’t care less about. He was disappointed when she nabbed him and reinforced the hand-holding rule for the time being. At least until they got up to the lake. Then he could go tumble himself tired.

“Why couldn’t Dad come?” he asked after a while. “Is it ‘cause he’s human?”

Hmm. No.

“Dad’s not as human as he looks,” she said.

“’Cause he’s a hero.”

“That’s right.”

“Does that make me a hero?”

Well, that was to be seen.

“Heroes start out as human,” Maggie said. “And if they protect the spirits of their homes, the _fae_ will bring them into the fold.”

“Does Dad protect the spirits?” Matt asked.

“What do you think?”

Matt paused and listened around to the trees, head cocking every which way. He came back to her with a gentle tug.

“I think he does,” he decided.

“Then he does.”

Matt’s fingers were cold in hers. Wet from all the leaves he wasn’t supposed to be touching.

“Mum.”

“Hmm?”

“If I was human, could I be a hero?”

She breathed out and set her foot on the first stone step up to the lake.

“Do you want to be human?” she asked him.

Matt touched his lip.

“Maybe.”

That’s what she liked to hear. Thinking.

“Then maybe you can be,” she said. “Hand. Stick. Big step.”

She was pleased that Matt wasn’t tired by the time they got to the lake, although she was less pleased when the first thing he did was slip into the mud at its edge.

Welp.

You bring a pup to water and all that.

She helped him out.

“We’re going to make an offering,” she told him, “To everyone on the island.”

Matt hummed.

“Candace gives me flowers,” he told her.

“We’re not giving anyone flowers,” she said. “We’re giving them a boost.”

“Like an energy drink?”

Ehn. More or less.

There was a wooden basket floating around in the reeds of the lake. The object of the task before them, Maggie briefed her pup, was to get in the basket and _stay_ in the basket and to sing to the forest until it indicated that it had received the offering.

Matt was pumped.

He was ace at jungle gyms. Getting into a nest of some type was the kind of thing him and his knobbly little hands were made for.

She took the lute off him before he went crashing into the water.

It was much harder than it seemed. The basket didn’t seem that big until you were in the water, trying to get into it. It was much, much taller then and very easily rocked. Getting in wasn’t a guarantee for staying in. Not to mention the lake’s reeds made it damn near impossible to swim with any kind of speed.

It turned out that those were also excellent for confusing blind selkie pups.

“This is horrible,” Matt informed her while they rested from the first seven attempts.

“That’s why it’s an offering,” Maggie said. “It’s a sacrifice.”

“Of what?” Matt grumbled.

“Our time.”

Matt didn’t have time for this philosophy shit. He just wanted to get in the damn basket.

“Maybe if we jump from something tall, we can land in it,” Matt thought out loud.

Mmm. Sure. Whatever you want.

Matt was pretty done by attempt number twelve. It wasn’t fun anymore.

“You giving up?” she asked him.

His father’s blood boiled to the surface of his skin immediately and so thoroughly that, for a second, he smelled almost human.

“NO.”

Obviously.

“UP. MUM. UP.”

Oh, no. But she was tired.

“MUM.”

Alright, alright. One more try. If this didn’t work, they were swimming out to sea and picking a random rock to play on.

They made it into the basket.

It was exhausting.

But the reeds it was made out of were steady once they were both inside and were woven together such that they formed little suns of light when the basket spun lazily past the sunset. Matty curled against her heart, worn out by the ordeal.

She let him doze for a bit, until the sun was a little too low for any more sleeping. Then she jostled him and let him wriggle up and situate the lute in his arms.

“You start,” she told him. “I’ll follow.”

He picked at his strings for a bit, then seemed to decide on a worthy tune. She listened and listened and gave him some time to light up the basket and the lilies craning over the lake’s surface.

The dust motes sought out the lute. They illuminated over the top of the basket and some swept in to dance around Matty’s fingers.

He couldn’t see them.

Never had Maggie wished more for him to be able to see. To be able to see what it was like to be a selkie like this.

It wasn’t fair.

God was merciful and spirits sought balance, but Matthew’s lot, Maggie allowed herself to think, had not been brought before either or any of those entities.

She smoothed a hand across his hair and prayed for a moment for mercy and kindness in his future.

And then she took up her flute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want the Murdocks to get to be a happy family y'all. I want them to be HAPPY. 
> 
> Also idk if it's clear yet, but the basic idea is that the more Matt goes to the land of the fae, the stronger his pull towards being a selkie becomes. Maggie and Jack want him to be able to choose whether or not he becomes selkie or human, however, and so are doing their best to give him an equal shot at both, and that means keeping him away from the land of the fae and teaching him how to be a human while also letting him shift into a seal and play music and receive offerings. They just need to be very careful with how much they let him experience both worlds.
> 
> Maggie, though, is torn about wanting Matt to be selkie or human, but thinks it would be kinder for him if he was human. Jack doesn't really have a point of perspective, he's more interested in Matt being happy whichever he chooses, and sometimes that means letting him be more selkie than not. 
> 
> Foggy, meanwhile, doesn't understand why someone might even consider not being a selkie. He mostly wants Matt to be his best friend forever :)
> 
> Hope that clears up some of the confusion folks might be having.


	13. leaning softly out

There were selkies on the mountain, Foggy realized mid-yank of the back of Candace’s sweater. She windmilled her arms over the giant puddle in the road by their house.

“There are selkies in the forest,” he said.

Candace stopped struggling.

“In the forest?” she repeated. “What’re they doing there?”

“I don’t know, maybe there’s water?”

He shook his hair away from his ears and turned the right one towards the green mound in the distance.

“It’s Matt,” he realized.

“It’s Matt?” Candace echoed. “Why’s Matt in the forest? It’s too dangerous for him to be in there.”

“He’s with someone else,” Foggy said. “Someone with a flute—oh, they’re singing now.”

Candace grabbed at his sleeve and tugged it all over the place.

“What’re they singing?” she demanded.

“I can’t _tell_ you if I can’t _hear_ them,” he spat down at her. He listened again. “I haven’t heard this song before.”

“Foggy.”

He looked back over the fence and saw Mom standing out on the porch with the laundry rescued from the drizzle stuffed in her basket.

“It’s the song of the forest,” Mom said, staring at the mountain herself now.

“But why would a selkie sing the song of the forest?” Candace agitated.

“There’s only one who I know would,” Mom said.

Only one? Was there a selkie of the forest? Maybe there was a pond or a creek up there or something?

Dad ducked through the porch door.

“Is that Grace?” he asked.

“Sounds like it,” Mom said. “And here I thought she’d gone away for good.”

Candace tore free of Foggy’s grip and splashed over to the first porch step. She pointed, all puffed up like she was insulted.

“That’s Matt,” she said. “Foggy said that’s Matt playing up there.”

Mom and Dad pulled back a little bit like they were surprised, then both cocked their ears like Foggy had before.

“So it is,” Dad said softly.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Mom said. “Woman finally went and got herself a mate. I guess it’s true, anything _is_ possible.”

Uh.

Foggy didn’t think that sounded very nice.

“Makes sense that her son would get chosen then,” Dad said. “Poor Grace could never catch a break; the spirits always used to pick her to lead. It’s a lot of responsibility to have.”

“That’s Matt’s mom?” Candace clarified. She jutted out a lip. “I thought he said she was mean?”

“You said that,” Foggy reminded her. “_Matt _said she’s busy.”

“I wonder with what,” Mom hummed. “Well, I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough. In the meantime, let’s think of an offering to give back to the two of them, hm? I’m sure it must have taken ages to—”

She stopped. Foggy looked around the sky and the horizon.

The singing was gone.

The lifting, pulling feeling that accompanied a mass offering sunk down twice as fast as it had arisen. Candace looked between everyone’s faces.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

Foggy’s stomach tied itself in a knot.

“Something bad,” he said.

Selkies don’t just cut themselves off abruptly. They fade, they wait, they let the last notes settle, and then they get up to leave a place. The muscles in Foggy’s neck had gone tight.

Matt’s chords had vanished just as quickly as the singing.

“Mom,” he pleaded as she and dad threw on coats and prepared to head out to the forest. “Let me come.”

“No, you stay here,” Mom said. “Watch Candace.”

“Stay, Foggy,” Dad ordered. “Anna, we’ve got to hurry.”

Mom swept down and hugged Foggy and then Candace and told them to turn off the lights again before she swung the front door closed.

Foggy and Candace ran over to the window to watch them go.

“Something bad’s happened to Matt and his mama,” Foggy announced. “We can’t just sit here and wait.”

Candace nodded seriously.

“They won’t find anyone on the mountain,” she said, “There are too many smells. And there’s that leprechaun.”

Yick. Yeah. Foggy had heard tales of the leprechaun. He shivered.

“What should we do, then?” he asked himself. It was starting to rain again, harder than before.

“Matt said before that his dad’s a hero,” Candace said, “Maybe we can ask him to help?”

Foggy frowned at her.

“He didn’t mean it like that,” he said, “Americans call everyone heroes. They don’t know what that really means.”

Candace blew her cheeks up at him.

“You got a better idea?” she scowled.

Well, no.

“Fine. Get your coat,” he said. “But don’t tell Mom I took you, or she’ll skin me.”

The fastest way to the lighthouse from their house was through the docks, but the ferryman wouldn’t but ferrying anyone in this weather.

Not to worry, though.

“You keep your head above water, you hear?” Foggy said at the edge of the shore, as he tied his coat around Candace’s and his shoes and then made two loops out of the rope for her arms. She’d worn her purple wetsuit in anticipation. She’d tied her shoes extra tight.

“Okay,” she promised.

“And if you can’t breath or the waves are gettin’ too big, you jab me in the side, alright?”

“Alright.”

Foggy wrapped what was left of the rope tight around his own shoulder and tied it off. He knelt down so Candace could climb onto his back and wrap her arms around his neck.

“Take a deep breath,” he told her.

Then he dove.

He broke the surface and Candace gasped out loudly from around his neck. The waves were getting choppy. He squinted around him but couldn’t see much. He never could with his seal eyes, they were much better in water. Candace slapped at his side and pointed and he followed her finger to a misty gray shape in the distance.

Alright. Ten minutes.

He rolled Candace onto the shore first and let the tide wash over him while he shifted back.

“It’s freezing,” Candace told him, grabbing at his hands to help him up out of the sand.

“It’s not so bad,” he said. He shook out his hair and took the make-shift backpack from her to dig out his raincoat and shoes and, once those were on and his selkie pelt wrapped up tight in the rope, they went running for the stone steps.

The steps were slippery from the rain and the moss that liked to grow on them, and Candace scraped her knee pretty badly in a stumble. But they got to the top in record time and knocked as loudly as they could so Mr. Murdock could hear the noise over the storm.

He opened the door and looked surprised down at them.

“Foggy? What are you doing here?” he asked.

Foggy pointed towards the mountain.

“Something bad’s happened,” he panted.

Mr. Murdock seemed to know exactly what he was talking about without any further explanation. He said ‘shit’ really loudly and some other words and then told Foggy and Candace to come inside.

They stood dripping in the foyer while he ran around getting his big boots and coat.

“I told her, I _told_ her,” he growled as he went.

He threw on a gray raincoat and grabbed his keys from the ring over the counter.

“You two stay here,” he ordered.

Ugh. This again.

“No,” Foggy said. “The forest isn’t friendly to humans. There are too many spirits in the way. Our parent are already there, anyways, we’ll meet them and go with you to help you find Matt.”

Mr. Murdock looked really fast between them and the door and then made a growl-groan sound.

“Alright, alright, sure. Whatever ya want. Out, out, _out_!”

Oh, wow. Yes, sir!

Mr. Murdock, if he was a selkie, would have been like, the _best_ herder. The males of the pod did this sometimes, this thing where they shooed and chased pups back to their mums and barked at outsiders and whales to keep them good and away from the group.

Mr. Murdock?

He would have been amazing at it. He got one of Foggy’s hands and one of Candace’s and half-dragged them over the fading sandbar and then chased them both up the cliff face even faster than most selkies Foggy knew could or would dare.

“Mountain, mountain, mountain, mountain; Grace, _why_?” Mr. Murdock chanted with his hands pressed against his face when they were eventually stood at the base of the forest and trying to figure out how to get in. It was dense with trees, there wasn’t a clear path, and it was dark.

“Foggy?”

Wuh-oh.

He cringed.

“FOGGY.”

Mom was furious as she tripped and stumbled over their way through the rain and mud and tall grass. She and Dad must have been on the other side, trying to work out a path, too. Mr. Murdock didn’t seem to hear her; he was busy talking to himself and searching the edge of the forest.

“I told you to stay back at the—_Candace?_”

Foggy was going to have no hair on either of his forms by the end of the night. He opened his mouth to start explaining, but Candace beat him to it.

“Mr. Murdock’s a hero,” she cried over the rain. “He’s gotta find his selkie!”

Mr. Murdock froze and finally noticed that Mom and now Dad were in front of and staring at him.

“A hero?” Mom repeated. “You’re Grace’s mate?”

“WHAT? HUH? Me? No,” Mr. Murdock blurted out, even more flustered than before. “I just—Matty’s up there and—”

Mom and Dad gave him high eyebrows and he flailed his arms and sent water everywhere.

“I CAN’T LIE, DON’T TALK TO ME,” he cried. “Just—how do I get up there?” He waved at the forest.

“There’s a trail up the side,” Dad said, “But it’s slick and—woah! Murdock, man, wait, that’s—alright, you can do it that way, too, I suppose.”

Matt’s dad had to be like, a _real_ athlete. He wasn’t afraid of no mud or big hill. He found the rocks in the mud and shoved himself off them and upwards in no time.

Foggy peeked nervously at Mom.

“The human will die in the forest,” she sighed. “Someone needs to go with him. Ed—”

“I’ll go!” Candace announced. Mom ignored her.

“—either you or I need to follow him. The other needs to take the kids back. Which do you—”

“I’ll go,” Foggy said. Mom glanced his way and went back to talking to dad.

“I’ll _go_,” Foggy repeated, louder this time.

“Franklin—”

“Matt’s my friend,” Foggy said with force. Once he had both parents’ attention, he softened. “Besides, if he hears me, he won’t be scared if he’s hiding.”

“MURDOCK,” Dad suddenly shouted away from them. “HOLD UP FOR A MINUTE, WILL YOU? Man, he is insane. Do you see this, Anna?”

Mom didn’t see. She was staring down at Foggy. Her lips stayed pressed together. Foggy flicked his eyes between his human eyes and seal eyes to make them extra-super powerful in the begging department.

“Foggy, you’re too young,” Mom said softly.

“It’s okay,” Foggy said, pointing gently at Mr. Murdock who had, surprisingly, gotten about halfway up the first big hill already. “I think I’ll be with a warrior-hero.”

Mom looked over and blinked in shock.

She took a deep breath. Then caught Foggy’s wrist and pulled him with her.

“Ed,” she snapped. “What’s that man’s name?”

Dad froze.

“Anna, what are you--?”

“What’s his name, Edward?”

“Jim? John? Jack? Something with a ‘J’—what are you doing? Foggy’s too young for this. He’s never been in the forest.”

Mom breathed so softly her face and shoulders didn’t seem to move at all.

“This is one of Franklin’s Tasks,” she said. “I can feel it.”

Foggy could, too. High in his chest, trilling.

Dad didn’t like it. For being so relaxed most of the time, when it came to big stuff like Tasks and Trials and any other rite of passage, Dad worried himself to bits.

“Anna—”

“JOHN,” Mom shouted up at the forest. “JUST ONE MOMENT, COME BACK DOWN, PLEASE.”

“Anna—”

“Come, Foggy,” Mom said. “Don’t you leave his side, you hear me?”

Yes, he heard.

Mr. Murdock was baffled at Mom shouting at him to take Foggy with him. He said a lot of things that got lost in the rain and made a lot of gestures uphill.

Mom helped Foggy rush up the side of the mountain to meet him halfway.

“He can hear and see better in the dark than you can,” she said, giving Foggy’s hand over to Mr. Murdock’s. “He can sense selkies when they’re close, too. Foggy, love, look at me. Don’t speak the leprechaun. Nor the tree folks. Touch no offerings that have been left in the forest and don’t—look at me—don’t shift, do you understand? Not once.” She looked up to Mr. Murdock. “Good luck,” she said. “You have our courage behind you.”

Mr. Murdock’s shoulders rose and fell several times, then, just like at the lighthouse, he threw up his hands and said, “Alright! Sure, whatever ya fuckin’ want, doll. Come here, honey, it's you and me now against this damn hill.”

And with that Foggy found himself jogging alongside who he was now 100% certain was a warrior-hero.


	14. from ferns that drop their tears

Foggy tried not to ask questions while he and Mr. Murdock ran up the mountain, but it was hard because, well.

He was just kind of a lot to be with.

It was weird.

Foggy had been around Mr. Murdock fairly often; he was always murmuring to himself as he paced the lighthouse, reading books and holding different tools up while he did. Matt mostly got his attention by coming up and hugging his waist because calling his name didn’t always seem to work. Once, when Matt did that, he didn’t really come back to himself at all, he just squatted down and picked Matt up and walked away with him just like that, like Matt was a baby or something.

Matt bit him. Foggy would have been slapped for that, but Mr. Murdock just said, ‘oh,’ like it had been a tiny flea bite he'd felt and then put Matt down and asked him what he wanted.

Basically, Mr. Murdock wasn’t exactly what Foggy would think of in terms of being hero-material.

He was, however, really good at hiking and finding rocks and footholds in the mud, and he was very, very good at not letting go of Foggy’s hand at all.

His callouses stuck out more than Dad’s and his fingers were bigger all the way around.

“What the hell is this?” Mr. Murdock growled, waving a hand at the clearing they had finally reached. It was all wrong. Everything in Foggy said to keep away from it. There was a cabin there—blue and black in the low light—that dribbled water down its sides into black bushes around it. Three little rings of mushrooms crossed over each other by the porch.

“It’s a leprechaun,” Foggy whispered.

“A what?” Mr. Murdock said.

Foggy shook his head.

“He’s bad news,” he said. “He’ll take your name and tell your future and it’s never a good one.”

Mr. Murdock stared down at Foggy for a long time.

“Is he in?” he asked. “Can you hear him or feel him or something?”

Was he deaf? Had Foggy not just explained why they shouldn’t talk to that man?

“Yes, I can feel him there, but—”

“Great.”

Wait, why were they going _towards_ the leprechaun’s workshop? Why? Why, why, _why_?

“NO,” Foggy barked. “He’ll take your name, Mr. Murdock. And he’ll take Matt’s and mine and he’ll—”

Mr. Murdock stopped and stooped down to put both his hands on the sides of Foggy’s upper arms.

“Sweetheart,” he said, “I’ve got more important things in my life than my name. You don’t have to come, alright? But if there’s a chance he can give us a direction to go in, I’ve got to take it.”

No one had more important things in their lives than their names.

Foggy could only marvel at this human stupidity.

He marveled too long; Mr. Murdock stood up and turned and gasped, then clutched at his heart.

“Jesus, man, get a bell,” he spat at the leprechaun himself leaning up against the doorframe of his workshop.

“Hello,” the leprechaun said.

Foggy shivered and drew back. The man had rings on every finger. Some of them with stones in them. Stones of power.

“How can I help you, human?” the leprechaun said.

“I’m looking for my mate and my son,” Mr. Murdock said. “Have you seen them? Do you know which way they went?”

The leprechaun’s eyes trailed up and down Mr. Murdock’s raincoat.

“Jonathan,” he said.

The hair on the back of Foggy’s neck stood up on end.

Mr. Murdock frowned.

“That’s me,” he said.

“You’ll die young, dear boy,” the leprechaun said.

“So I’ve been told,” Mr. Murdock said. “I’m looking for my son, sir. Can you help me?”

The leprechaun’s eyebrows danced. He was confused. Not by the rain, but by Mr. Murdock’s answer. Foggy was confused by it, too.

A human who already knew their fate?

And didn’t care?

“He and his mother stopped by here for shoes,” the leprechaun said. “They were headed to the lake at the summit.”

“That way?” Mr. Murdock asked, pointing straight ahead.

“No, behind, that way,” the leprechaun pointed over Mr. Murdock’s shoulder. He pulled back and clenched and unclenched his ringed fingers. “Are you sure about this, Jonathan? Your future is a—”

“Bloody and miserable one; yeah, yeah, pal. You should see my _life_,” Mr. Murdock said. “Thanks for the directions. Come on, Fogs.”

Mr. Murdock’s big calloused palm wrapped around his again and then they were off, stumbling up the hill towards a flat bit of land that cut off into tall steps.

Foggy glanced behind and saw the leprechaun still standing on his porch, rubbing at his beard with his ringed fingers. Foggy's foot caught on a rock, though, and his attention shot down. When he looked back again, the leprechaun was gone.

Mr. Murdock was…kind of? Irreverent? Foggy realized the longer they climbed.

He didn’t understand. Matt wasn’t like this at all. He was so tender when it came to the _fae_.

“You have to be careful of the spirits,” Foggy hissed as they slipped and slid through what felt like barrelful upon barrelful of rotting leaves.

“The spirits can bite me,” Mr. Murdock said.

Uh?

“Is this an American thing?” Foggy wondered, then realized he’d asked out loud.

“No,” Mr. Murdock said, “This is a New York thing. I know y’all out here are big on star-writing or tea-leaf reading or whatever, but in my experience, kiddo, _you’re_ the one who makes your fate. I know exactly what bed I’m lyin’ in, thanks. Hey, careful, you. Gimme your hand.”

Foggy couldn’t believe his ears.

“That’s pride talking,” he snapped. “Matt said you honored the spirits.”

Mr. Murdock wasn’t paying attention.

“Mr. Murdock,” Foggy said, pulling against the giant paw curled around his own, “You can’t talk like that—you _have_ to honor the forest spirits or they’ll never help you find what you need.”

Mr. Murdock stopped and the sound of leaves swishing stopped with him.

He listened around. Foggy stopped pulling and listened, too. He could feel a pulse up high. He jerked his face up.

“There’s a selkie at the summit,” he said.

“Only one?” Mr. Murdock asked.

Only one.

There was a basket at the summit. It was stuck in the reeds of a wide, cluttered lake and was listing on its side. Rain chattered against the top of it. The water around it smelled irony.

“They’re bleeding,” Foggy whispered. Mr. Murdock told him to stay there and not to move and then ran and jumped into the water. It must have been deeper than it looked because he sank in almost all the way to his shoulders and sent water every which way going over to the basket’s edge.

Foggy looked around for any sign of Matt. There was nothing. No sweater or lute or anything, there was a shell flute half-sunken in the mud. He fished it out and saw Mr. Murdock had gotten his hand on the basket and was shouting at whoever he’d found inside.

“God, no. Come on,” he was saying. “Baby, wake up. Come on, sweetheart. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.”

Foggy didn’t know what this word meant but it was a bad one. Good things, it did not bode.

“Grace, darlin’, come on, honey. Wake up, _please_ wake up.”

Grace.

Matt’s mom. Where was Matt?

Mr. Murdock swore extra loud and caught the edge of the basket. He swam as best as he could holding onto it, then dragged it up into the mud. Now that the mouth was turned his way, Foggy could see a woman inside. Mr. Murdock gathered her in his arms and lifted her out of the basket.

She left behind a wide stain on the reeds.

Salt. Bitter. Iron.

Blood.

Mr. Murdock laid the woman down on the grass and kept on shouting at her, shaking her, and pressing his head to her chest.

He sat up on his knees.

“Grace!” he shouted louder than before. “Maggie! MARGARGET.”

The selkie gasped softly. Just enough to show that she was still alive.

“Oh my god, Mags. Grace, please, stay with me,” Mr. Murdock nearly sobbed. “Where’s Matty, hon? Where’s Matty? Where’s Matty?”

Grace the selkie wasn’t awake, though. She was barely breathing.

“Shit, shit, _shit_. Margaret? _Margaret_.” The selkie gasped again. Mr. Murdock lifted her and pressed his forehead against hers.

“Don’t die,” he pleaded. “Not like this.”

The selkie made a noise and Mr. Murdock panicked and laid a hand against her face.

“What? What’d you say? Maggie?”

She made the noise again. It wasn’t quite a word, more of a sound.

“Ow?” Mr. Murdock repeated. “Are you hurt? Stupid fucking question—sorry, sorry—hang in there, sweetheart, we’re gonna get you help, okay? You’re gonna be alright.”

“Owls,” Foggy said firmly.

Mr. Murdock looked up at him.

“What?”

“_Owls_,” Foggy said. “The owls did this. Macha, the Owl Witch, did this.”

“I don’t understand,” Mr. Murdock said. “Did they—did they take Matt?”

Foggy stared at the selkie. She was the selkie-nun from last month. He recognized her now. She had led the _fae_ back many times before leaving this land, Mom said. The Owl Witch must have heard her song. Recognized it. She must have heard the same notes in Matt’s and drawn the reasonable conclusion.

“We need to get her help,” Foggy said. “If we don’t, she’ll turn to stone.”

Mr. Murdock looked around helplessly.

“But Matt,” he said.

“Mr. Murdock, she’ll die if we leave her much longer,” Foggy said. “I know where Matt is. We’ll need help to get there.”


	15. over the young streams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV shift about a third of the way through, friends!

Grace was dying, fading before his very eyes. Her heartbeat was barely a flutter and she got heavier with each passing second.

And Matty was gone.

Jack had thought that the moment Matt had gone blind, laying, screaming in the middle of the street had been his worst nightmare.

No. Nope. Not even close.

The only comfort he found at the moment was Foggy and his practically glowing hair and skin. The kid had dragged his feet on the way, fearful of forest spirits in a way which told Jack that he’d been born and bred in the water.

Sometime while Jack had been dragging Grace back to land, though, the boy had scooped up her shell-flute from god knew where and thank Jesus and every one of the saints, he seemed to know instinctively how to use it.

The sound he pulled from it was louder than any Jack had ever heard Grace play. Piercing almost.

Ethereal.

It was a song, but one that sent chills down Jack’s spine and one which sent light scattering across the veins of the rotting leaves around the boy like frost.

Foggy’s skin seemed to become whiter with each note, while the freckles under his eye darkened and blossomed out. His features seemed to meld into each other when he closed his eyes and his eyelashes nearly vanished. And it finally dawned on Jack why he’d been named after the mist.

The sound of a horn of some type answered back from somewhere on the mountain.

“They’re coming,” Foggy said, opening his eyes to reveal ones which were no longer blue, but solid black in the iris. “Breathe for her.”

How?

“Do you know her song?”

Barely?

“Sing for her,” Foggy directed.

Fuck. Okay, okay.

“_Idir an is idir as_,” he crooned to Grace’s slack eyebrows. “_Idir thuaidh is idir theas._”

Her breath seemed to come a little easier to her now.

“Keep singing,” Foggy instructed.

The selkies came and took Grace from him. They let him carry her as far as he could manage out of respect, but a huge man met them down somewhere in the trees and took her out of his arms.

Anna Nelson wrapped an arm around him and promised that she would be okay.

His throat couldn’t make any sound.

It was busy holding his heart.

“John,” Anna said. “She will be safe. Matthew will be safe. He is stronger than you think he is. He can hold on. We know where he is.”

“Where?” Jack forced himself to croak. “Where is he?”

“In the Owl Witch’s house,” Ed Nelson said. He kept a hand on Foggy’s head and pressed him close against his ribs. Foggy struggled to walk like that, but Jack understood why Ed refused to let go.

God, he understood.

“Where is that?” he asked. “How do you get there?”

“Grace will take you,” Anna said. “The Witch stole her twice when she lived here with us.”

Jesus Christ. No wonder she couldn’t keep far enough away.

“She’s—”

“She will be healed,” Anna said firmly. “She needs time.”

“We don’t _have_ time,” Jack snarled, pulled away from her touch. “Don’t you understand? My son—my _blind_ son has been kidnapped by some birdlady, who’s half-killed the love of my life, Anna. How am I supposed to just wait right now?”

Anna drew back and watched his face.

“You really are one, aren’t you?” she asked.

“One what?” he snapped.

“A hero.”

“Not this again,” he groaned. “It always come back to this—I swear, you people are obsessed. Listen. I’m not a hero, okay? I’m just a guy who wants his son and his mate on the same mortal plane, yeah? That’s all I am.”

“Selfless,” Anna whispered.

“Self_ish_,” Jack corrected harshly. “Selfish. Do I care? No. Not right now. I’ll say six Hail Marys or whatever the hell the priest wants from me later. In fact, I will do anything you want right now if you would just _tell _me where this Owl Witch lives.”

Anna withdrew even further. And now that he was aware of it, he saw that some of the other selkies had, too.

“Matthew will be fine, Jack,” Ed said from in front of him. “Between his mother and his father, he seems like he has a sturdy composition.”

Matt had feelings.

He wasn’t good at naming them in any kind of way that social workers had ever understood, but he was pretty good at naming them in his own head, he liked to think.

He called this one ‘get off me and go to hell.’

“So sweet, look at that face,” the giant ball in front of him cooed. Her voice whistled when she spoke. She dragged something brittle and sharp and hollow down the side of his cheek. Then she dragged it up, like she was stroking him.

Dad told him not to bite people.

Mum told him not to bite people.

But sometimes, man, you just gotta bite people.

She screeched.

Hadn’t been expecting that one, apparently.

“Insolent,” she hissed.

“Let me go,” Matt barked.

The lady shifted her weight back and forth until it felt like it was concentrated at the top of her shape. Like a robin puffing out its red breast.

“And risk you going out there, crying for your mommy? I think not,” the woman said. “You’re mine now. And oh, think of what we can do with you.”

He was gonna pass.

“You don’t want me,” he said. “I’m human.”

The lady scoffed.

“Nice try—you’re so cute.”

“I’m _human_,” Matt insisted.

“No, you aren’t, dear,” the owl woman said. “The spirits say so; they say you’re selkie enough to lead the others home, which means that you’re selkie enough to leave them to fade away.”

This lady was weird. That was fine, there were plenty of weird people in New York and Dad said that sometimes you gotta just let people do their thing. So she was allowed to be weird, Matt figured, but that didn’t mean that he had to stick around for her to be weird all over _him_.

“Ah, ah, ah. Where do you think you’re going?” the owl woman said.

Nowhere, if these ropes had any say in it. They needed to go.

“I want my lute,” he whined.

A rustle of wings scuffled along overhead. More rustling followed it until the whole room sounded like the mall at Christmas, with all the scouts wrapping presents.

“You have no need of that thing,” the woman said. She sounded kind of rustle-y, too. Did she have feathers?

“Are you a bird?” he asked.

The lady squawked.

“What do you mean, am I a bird?” she demanded. “Am I a bird? No, I’m not a bird. I’m the Owl Witch of the mountains and sea.”

“Oh,” Matt said, flexing his hands behind his back. “Sorry, it’s just I can’t tell so well.”

The Owl Witch sniffed.

“You’ve never seen an owl before, selkie-child?” she drawled.

There was a trick that Matt’s horrible, nasty, never-to-be-spoken-of-ever-again foster father had taught him. Like everything else that horrible, nasty, should-die-in-a-ditch man had taught him, it was painful. But it did come in handy for things like getting stuck in ropes.

Not that Dad ever had to know.

He’d be arrested for trying to murder the Grade A Asshole again if he did.

And then Mum would have to go to court again and her convent would freak out about whether or not she was allowed to be a nun again. And there would be another big fuss about Matt’s safety and then there’d be _more_ therapy and _more_ social workers, and really, nobody in the world had time for that kind of fanfare.

Instead, Matt would rather everyone just keep mum about what he could and couldn’t do and what the horrible Asshole had taught him and hadn’t.

It had been a long year.

The Asshole had wanted to keep him for at least two, and then, when Matt had been picked up for the last time by the police, he’d said that he’d be back, just you wait, Matty.

Ha.

Yeah, Matt believed it.

He popped his thumb out of joint and wailed.

The Owl Witch startled back with a bluster of feathers.

“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded. “What’s with all this noise?”

The horrible old man said that when you’re little, your chief weapons are volume and tears.

And surprise, but again. No one was talking about that. That was Dad-fighting-people information.

Matt wailed harder.

“What? What? Why are you crying? What’s the matter with you?” the Owl Witch demanded. Her big fluffy body moved all around the space in front of him as though she was dancing.

“It _hurts_,” he hiccupped.

“What hurts?” the lady asked in alarm.

Hm.

So this lady had maybe had little kids of her own at one point. Why else would she be asking him what hurts? If she really wanted him quiet, she would have just hit him.

“Hand,” he cried. “Hurts.”

“Which hand? Why’s it hurt? What’ve you done to it?”

He cried harder. Louder.

“Oh, for the love of—”

The fluffy form moved around him. She shoved him forward so that his cheek was mashed up against his crossed legs. Strange, earthy-smelling tendrils dragged across his face while she did.

Her wings, he thought.

Make note of that.

“You stupid child, you’ve gone and pulled it out of place with your fussing,” the Owl Witch grumbled.

Matt whined, then sobbed as babyishly as possible.

He could hear her heartbeat jump.

“You—you stay right there,” she eventually said. Her wings scratched across the floor while she walked away, grumbling about him crying and carrying on in such a way. He didn’t know how far she was going, so he had to wait and listen to the room. The sound of hooting and beaks clicking overhead told him the place was shaped like a tall dome. There was maybe an opening at the top to let the birds in.

He could smell a fire somewhere close by and more importantly,

A window.

He could hear the glass pane shuddering as the wind outside pounded against it.

He waited.

Footfall after footfall landed against hard ground—not tile, not rock. He didn’t know what it was and it wasn’t the priority here. The priority was the lute. He could just about make it out in his head, one of the birds kept rolling it in a circle by the fire.

The sound of a drawer scraped right in his ear.

Well, that was his cue.

He twisted the wrist and pulled so that his hand slid past the one it was tied to, and then he lunged forward and snatched the lute away from the owl playing with it. That took four beats; on five, he hit the windowsill.

On six, the window was stuck.

On seven, it was still stuck.

On eight, the birds overhead started making a whole lot of sounds.

On nine, the witch made a curious noise in the hallway.

On ten, he decided, well, what the hell? He might be falling to his death here in a second, might as well make a statement about it.

On eleven, he smashed the window with his elbow.

And on twelve he was, once again, free.

He hit dirt and it hurt, and he definitely cracked something, somewhere, but he didn’t have time at the moment to stick around and figure out what it was.

There were more pressing issues.

For one, it was misty. So misty. Water sprayed against his face with each gust of wind.

For two, the owl witch was shrieking above so he needed to pick a direction, asap.

He threw himself up and ran with the wind. The roar of water in the distance told him he was near a river.

All rivers eventually lead to the sea.

He fell a lot on his way to the river. It was hard to run in this part of the world, especially without the stick. The ground and grass were super knobbly.

Eventually, he tripped and landed hard on the hand he’d just relocated the thumb on.

A huge, cracking noise sounded overhead and he heard the scream of an owl. His heart pounded in his ears and he accidently whimpered out loud.

The owl screamed again.

Water? Maybe if he got in the river and swam, it wouldn’t see him?

He didn’t know; he didn’t know if there were rocks in the water and he couldn’t remember what colors he was wearing. It might be stupid to jump into the river if the Owl Witch could see him straight away.

He heard a thud and then the squeak of grass right over him.

“Get ye on, then, ya horrible thing,” a voice boomed over his head. “Go on. It’s mine. I found it first. Get fucked! Go on!”

Oh.

That was bad.

The owl screamed louder, coming in close enough that Matt could hear it beating its wings. More were coming. He made himself smaller and tighter around the lute.

“HEY. I _said_, get out of here,” the big voice cried. “Do you want a piece of this? Hey? Hey??”

The birds hissed at whatever flailing the man was doing.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, you terrible beasts. Go on, then. Go on, you heard me, that’s right.”

The beating and hissing and shrieking started up again but broke off into sections until the sounds were all but gone.

“Hmph!” the man standing over Matt said. Matt heard his big boots on the ground as he turned around. “Now, what have we here?”

Nothing.

A mouse.

Actually, no. Not even that.

The man gasped.

“_Selkie-child_,” he whispered.

Matt curled up tight, tight—as tight as could be.

“Oh, child. Oh, wee one. You’re safe with me. Here, then lad, come out. You’re alright. Oh, you’re so small.”

That tone sounded…nonviolent at least? Friendly?

Matt uncurled just a teeny bit.

“That’s a good boy,” the big man said. “Oh, look at you, now. Cute as a button—aye, you pups always are. Hey, where’s your mother, little one? Why’re you out here on your own? This is far from your home, isn’t it?”

“What are you?” Matt asked as quietly as he could.

There was a pause.

Then a huge, thundering laugh.

“Well, can’t you see, boy? I’m a giant!”

That was problematic.

“Don’t eat me, please,” Matt pleaded. “My Mum’s hurt—that lady hurt her and she needs help and—and—”

“Hey, hey, now. You’re alright, little one. What’s this about your mother?”

Matt clutched at the lute.

“The Owl Witch hurt her,” he said, “She hurt her and then she grabbed me and I couldn’t get away and we went really high up and—”

“Breathe, son. Breathe.”

He tried. Took in big gasps of air.

“Please don’t eat me,” he said.

“I’m not going to eat you,” the giant told him. “What’s the matter with your hand?”

It must have been swollen.

“I need to go home,” Matt told him. The giant’s huge form twisted and moved closer and closer until Matt could just about feel the heat he was putting off.

“Home? Where’s home?”

“The lighthouse,” Matt said.

“Oh! Down in the village!”

“Yes!” Matt said, scrambling up with his arms still around the lute. “Can you show me which way it is?”

“Oh, absolutely, little one. See, you follow that path there and when you come to the wall, you go left, yeah? And you follow that road there for about two miles or so until you hit the cave and once you’re there, you go through that; it comes up on the other side and there you are! A straight shot to the village.”

Matt’s heart sank.

“That way?” he asked, pointing.

“What? No, no, little one, were you not payin’ attention? That way.” The giant pointed more left. Matt swallowed.

“There’s a trail there?” he asked. “Is it far from the road?”

Is it paved?

Were there rocks? Potholes?

“No, no. There are no roads out this way,” the giant said. “It’s a trail, though, you’ll see it. The grass grows on each side most of the way.”

Matt swallowed again and sucked in a breath.

Okay, he could do this.

Go slightly left until there was a break; until there was a line of grass, then a line of nothing, then a line of grass. Get onto that trail and turn to face left and make sure to stay with grass on each side. And then—

“Sorry, what’s after the trail again?” he asked the giant.

“A wall,” the giant told him, crouching down and putting the biggest, warmest, roughest hand ever on Matt’s back and moving the other one straight out in front of him, pointing. “Here, you can just barely make it out from here.”

Er. Sure.

“A wall,” he said. “Left at the wall, and then to a cave, through the cave, and straight to the village?”

“That’s right,” the giant said right next to Matt’s ear. “Good at directions, you are.”

Yikes, yikes, yikes.

He reached out and caught what he thought was probably the giant’s thumb.

“Is there anything before the cave?” he asked. “is it in a big rock? Or something like that?”

The giant was quiet.

“No,” he said, softer now. “It’s a cave, son. Hole in the cliff, you’ll see it, you can’t miss it.”

Matt begged to differ. He felt a little shaky. He’d never done this without a guide, much less a stick.

“Okay,” he said, pulling his hand back and tucking it around the lute. “Thank you.”

Shakily, he took the first step. The ground was uneven.

Oh, no.

This was going to be bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is Maggie's song:  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FkiHtTO-mk
> 
> It's the song from the Song of the Sea film.


	16. away with us he's going

Matt yelped when his foot slipped against wet stone for the fifth time. He caught himself with his hands, but pain rang through his knees. His jeans were torn, he could feel the strings of them on the hot skin underneath. They felt especially corded from the rain. His shirt felt hot and heavy, too.

He pushed himself back up and puffed out another breath.

That giant back there?

Yeah, he’d lied.

This wasn’t a trail. This was a bunch of crunchy, slippery rocks. And Matt couldn’t find anything even marginally stick-like to help him out here because he was surrounded by grass and grass only. It was tall, some of it taller than him, and it was wet and sometimes, when Matt’s searching hands felt around his sides, it slashed into his hands and cut them. Sometimes, the cuts stung really, really bad.

His hands were hot now, just like his knees.

“I’m never coming back here,” he told the ground. “You’re a horrible country and all you want to do is hurt me.”

The ground said nothing back.

Matt stood up straight and squared his shoulders. He wasn’t sure how far he’d come already, but it couldn’t be much further now until the stone wall.

He put out a foot and tested the ground, carefully, carefully. Feeling for mud. Feeling for rock. Water. Gravel, anything really.

This step felt gravely. Gravel was safe. He put his weight forward.

And then got to work on the the other foot.

It was raining again. Hard and cold. The water wasn’t so bad except where it kept cracking against Matt’s neck and where it ran from his hair into his eyes. They stung. Not as bad as his hands did, though. His hands actually kind of liked the water; it made them feel less hot.

But those things weren’t important.

What was good and important about the rain was that it made the pictures in Matt’s head seem a little clearer. The water rattling in front of him made a different sound than that around him. Rock sounded different than grass in the rain. So did dirt and puddles. There was a trail before him now in his head and he could follow it easier, even though it was still super slippery and unstable.

At least he knew he was headed the right way.

Eventually, the slipping and sliding and the beating his poor knees were taking came to a halt.

Something had changed.

The rain rattled against rocks and gravel and puddles on either side of him now, rather than in front.

“Wall,” he told himself. He held his hands out forward and stepped, slowly, one foot at a time, into the space ahead.

One

Two

Three—

His hands scraped against something cold.

He cheered.

Rock! Stone!

The wall!

Take a left at the wall!

He bit his lip and turned left. The sound of raindrops told him that the trail went that way. There was more sound here, more rain hitting water and gravel than the shush of rain hitting grass. This trail would be wider.

Good.

Phew.

Okay. Onwards to the cave.

It was a long, long way to the cave. Or maybe Matt was just tired. It was colder now than before, but he wasn’t sure what time it was anymore. He and Mum had been in the forest sometime around sunset, he thought. It had still been warm then. But he didn’t know how long it had been since. Maybe hours?

Maybe it would be morning soon. And maybe a farmer or someone would see Matt trying to find this cave and would come over to help him.

That would be nice.

Matt shivered.

Maybe that farmer would find Dad. Dad was probably worried sick. And Mum needed help. Dad needed to know that Mum needed help. Matt had to tell him so that he could go up and save Mum.

If Mum was still alive.

…She’d still be alive right?

Right?

Mum would—

He couldn’t stop the sound he made. He tried to hold it back, but it came out all on its own.

No. Stop that, he told himself.

He was being dumb. He was being stupid and a baby.

There was no need for this crying business. Mum would be fine. She was always fine, and so she’d be fine this time.

She’d—

Dad had promised. He said he would always look after them, both of them. As long as he lived.

…but what if Mum didn’t?

What if Mum died up there?

That would be Matt’s fault. He was the one who the owl witch had been after. If it wasn’t for him, Mum never would have even climbed up there to begin with.

If it wasn’t for him—

Would Dad?

Be mad?

Would he even want Matt back if Mum died?

Matt took a step back and the world tipped with it. He landed on his side. On his hip. The left one, the right above his knee that was all scraped up and hot and bleeding, just like his hands and—and—

If Mum died because of him, of course Dad wouldn’t want him back.

That’s what the horrible old man had said.

He said that Matt was too much for Dad. Dad already had a busy life. Just like Mum. Mum didn’t have time for Matt; she had other people to help, so, so many other people. People who deserved it.

Neither of them needed a kid like Matt. Matt needed too much. Too much time. Too much help.

Dad only put up with him because he thought he could fix Matt one day, the old man said.

But he couldn’t. No one could.

The doctor had said that Matt would be blind forever.

Dad could have a new baby, though, if he wanted. If Mum died, maybe he would. Maybe he’d say enough was enough and he’d leave Matt here. Maybe in jail for killing Mum. Maybe with the other selkies if he was being nice.

And then maybe he’d go home to New York and have a new human baby. One that wasn’t blind or needy. One that didn’t get their moms killed.

If Matt asked really nicely, maybe Dad would at least bring him back to New York with him. Matt would—maybe he’d go live with the old man again. The old man said he’d be waiting.

And yeah. It would hurt. A lot. It would hurt more than ever because Dad wouldn’t come for him this time and Mum wouldn’t be there to hold his hand when they went down to the harbor.

But it was still…something, at least.

Better than Ireland.

Better than laying around on slippery rocks in the rain in Ireland.

Matt swallowed and pressed his wet sleeve against his face. It didn’t help anything. He felt like he didn’t deserve the shirt at all at the moment.

He swallowed a couple more times.

That didn’t help too much either but clenching his teeth did.

If Dad was going to leave him anyways, it didn’t make sense to sit out here in the rain. That wasn’t helping anyone go anywhere. Matt needed to start doing things better for himself. Step one was finding this cave.

He could do it.

He pushed himself up again and put his hot hands on the sides of his temples, holding it. Listening.

He could do this. He just had to push himself.

The mind controls the body, the old man said.

Matt’s body was dumb, but his mind was better. He was smart.

Dad said he was smart.

Mum said he was smart.

He’d have that at least. They couldn’t take the words back now that they’d said them. Even if Mum died and Dad went back to New York.

Matt was still smart.

He could do this.


	17. the solemn eyed

Cave?

Found.

Matt would be proud of himself if he wasn’t too busy trying to calm his heart down.

His fingers had found a huge slab of hard, cold, and solid and he’d followed it along until it was solid no longer. The air there went cold and a dripping sound echoed from that space.

This all seemed to Matt to be a very cave-like atmosphere. He’d never been in one before, well, an above-water one. He’d been in plenty of underwater caves. Fish liked to live there. So did all the things Mum told him not to bring to the surface.

He kept his hands on the entrance wall and put a foot down to feel for the cave floor. He hit something hard and solid.

That was a good start.

He kept going.

The first three steps were easy, almost like they were a staircase. A really uneven one, but a staircase none the less. Matt knew how to work staircases.

He maybe got too far ahead of himself. He had to let go of the wall for the next step and as soon as he did, his foot went way far down and forward and just like that, control over the situation was gone.

He splashed up to the surface in shock and twisted around, treading.

Water; this was water! Deep water! He couldn’t feel the bottom with his toes.

Bad, bad, bad.

This was worse than the river and the field and the trail all put together.

There weren’t a lot of rules at home and certainly not many that both Mum and Dad agreed on, but swimming in human form anywhere that wasn’t a pool was a No in every sense of the word. It had been okay when he was smaller and when he could see better, but now?

It was a big, heavy ‘No.’

Dad said that Matt could get stuck under water if he swam without a guide in his human form. Mum said that he could lose his bearings if he left the surface and stopped paying attention for even a minute.

Matt had tested this when the two of them weren’t looking. He’d thought, stupidly, that he knew the harbor like the back of his own hand—sight or no sight. And so when Mum had been busy once, he’d slipped out to go for a swim—just a little one. He never planned on going more than a couple of yards out into the water.

Bad, bad, bad idea.

A dockworker spotted him, thankfully, and then there had been an ambulance and a police car and Dad had been furious and Matt had had a good talking to. He hated good talking tos. Not that he’d have any more of them after this.

No.

He wasn’t thinking about that.

He was doing things.

He re-found the stone steps with his hands and pulled himself up onto them. The water was freezing. Way colder than the rain.

“Listen,” Matt told the cave with a bravado he didn’t feel, “I could really use someone in here to work with me, right now. This is your chance to redeem yourself.”

His voice echoed around the caverns. The sound lit up the space in Matt’s head. The ceiling was higher than he thought it would be.

Wait.

That was an idea.

“Hello?” he called.

The sounded echoed and echoed. It made a picture in his head of big, teethlike rocks in front of him and a flat, flat surface below. That was the water. The sound didn’t sink into it so well; it bounced off the surface.

“Hello!!” he called louder than before.

The picture bloomed again. There were rocks along the side of the cave. They stretched up into an arch under which the still surface of the water sat.

“HELLO!” he shouted.

Just past the arch was a little slope. A beach probably. Matt breathed out.

Okay. Okay, he just had to get to the arch, and then through that to the beach. That wasn’t so bad. He could swim that far. He just had to be super, super calm about it so he didn’t make too much noise and disturb the water. As long as it stayed mostly flat and he had a sound echoing, he could get there without a guide.

He shivered. Then turned his attention down to surface in front of him.

He could really use his coat right now. At least as a seal, he had more blubber on him to ward off the sting of the cold.

Also whiskers. Whiskers helped a lot in making sense of the sea.

“This sucks,” he told the water. He took off his boots and tied their laces together to wrap around his neck. They’d get even more wet, yeah, and the leprechaun _had_ told him not to go dipping them in too much trouble, but Matt couldn’t swim so well with them on.

He carefully slipped a few toes into the water. They ached. He breathed out.

He had to be calm.

Mind controls the body.

Mind controls the body.

He sunk in his ankle.

The water was distracting. It sucked the heat out of every bit of Matt’s arms and legs and it whirled around his middle in currents that seemed to lick his belly and sides with sharp tongues.

Bad, bad, bad. He needed move faster in case he got too stiff and tired, but he couldn’t go splashing around. He’d already lost the arch in his head from the shock of the water.

“Hello!” he cried, once he was in up to his shoulders. The sound of the water lapping at him as he treaded it muddled the returning sound, but a wavering picture of the arch still made itself up in Matt’s head.

He made a strong pull in that direction, then another and another until he thought he was maybe fifteen feet or so from where he started.

“Hello!” he cried again.

The arch lit up, closer now.

_Yes_. He just needed to keep it in his head. To keep a sound going high above the water.

“_Dúlamán na binne buí, dúlamán Gaelach_,” he sang over the next couple of pulls. “_Dúlamán na farraige, be'fhearr a bhí in Éirinn_.”

He didn’t know exactly what the song meant, but Dad sang it under his breath sometimes when he was making dinner. He said it was a song about seaweed and Irishmen. Matt didn’t understand how those two things were supposed to fit together, much less in a song. Still, it echoed around the cave and made the walls and arch burn bright and solid in Matt’s head.

“_Dúlamán na binne buí,”_ he chanted. “_Dúlamán Gaelach_—”

“_Dúlamán na farraige, be'fhearr a bhí in Éirinn_!”

Matt’s neck prickled; he went still and shivered.

That.

Hadn’t been him.

“_Dúlamán na binne buí, dúlamán Gaelach_,” the voice carried on cheerfully. “_Dúlamán na farraige, be'fhearr a bhí in Éirinn_!”

It laughed.

Matt tried not to panic. He had to keep the water steady. He pulled himself forward as quickly as he dared with his head above water. The other voice bounced off the walls and revealed the arch to be directly over his head. It was much, much wider across than Matt had been able to tell before.

“_Dúlamán—_what’s this?” the voice halted. Matt gasped and ducked under.

BAD, BAD, BAD.

Seal reactions were not people reactions!!

The water’s temperature slammed against his face and he burst back up, gasping and coughing.

“Woah, there!” the voice said up high on the arch. “Is someone down there?”

Matt coughed and shook his hair out. That had been dumb. Now the person in the cave knew he was in it _and_ the splashing was echoing off the walls in wide ripples; the picture in his head rippled and wavered around with it. The beach swam all over with the upset water.

Come _on_.

Well, Matt couldn’t very well stay here as a sitting duck, waiting for the troll on the arch or whatever he was to come down and eat him. He swam haphazardly towards the rocking beach and scraped his knees against it. As soon as he got them and his feet back under him, he threw himself into standing and set his feet apart as firmly as he could. He put up his fists.

The thing—whatever it was—drew closer. Its feet slapped against the ground with a metallic jingle, as though it wore a bell around its leg or ankle or something.

“A human-child,” the thing suddenly hissed.

“Who are you?” Matt barked.

“What are you doing here, human-child?” the thing gasped.

Human?

“I’m not human,” Matt said. “I’m a selkie.”

There was a pause. The water around his ankles seemed to be settling.

“A selkie?” the thing repeated. It drew in closer and as it did, it got taller and taller, until Matt thought he was maybe staring into its chest. He adjusted his head.

“Oh! Oh, I see it now,” the tall thing cried. “A selkie-child! A human-child! A selkie-human-child!”

“What do you want from me?” Matt demanded.

“Were you the one singing, selkie-child?”

Matt realized his fists were falling and he put them back up in front of his face.

“Maybe. Who’s askin’?” he snapped.

The thing laughed, loud like the crack of a whip.

“Look at you,” it said. “What _is_ that accent?”

“New York,” Matt said.

“New what?”

“York.”

“Oh, yes. I know Cork,” the thing said. Its jingling got even closer. It smelled like brackish water and metal.

“No,” Matt said. “_York_. New _York_.”

“York, you say?”

“Yes!”

The metal and water creature huffed.

“I don’t know of any Yorks,” it said. “If you’re looking for Yorks, new or otherwise, you’ve got the wrong cave, son. All I’ve got are memories.”

Memories?

“Yes,” the creature said, slipping into the water with barely the sound of a brush. It moved behind Matt. His heart sped up. “Do you need a memory, selkie-child? Or perhaps a prophecy?”

“I don’t need any of that,” Matt said, turning around to try to face this thing. “I just need to get to the village.”

“The village? What do you need there?”

“My—”

Well, actually. He wasn’t so sure anymore.

If Mum died, then going home to Dad would just be painful.

“I need—” he tried again.

He didn’t know. He didn’t know, anymore.

“I need—” he felt himself hiccup more than he heard it.

“Woah, now,” the metal and water man said. “What’s this? There’s no need for tears, selkie-child. Come here, small one.”

Matt’s gut instinct was to punch the waterman as he swept in, but at the same time—what if all he had were the _fae_ now? He couldn’t afford to go making enemies out of them. They were kind. Weird, but kind.

The waterman closed thin arms and a curtain of heavy, fine threads around Matt. The man was cold. His body was bony. But he said ‘there, there,’ like he actually cared, and Matt couldn’t help but lean into the hug and reach back.

“Oh, you poor thing,” the waterman said. “You’re nearly as cold as me. That’s not any state for a selkie to be in—where’s your coat, little one?”

At home.

With Dad.

Matt cried harder when he realized that he might never get it back, now. Selkies who didn’t get their coats were doomed to be drawn to the sea anyways. They drowned in their human forms. They never came back to shore.

He didn’t want to drown.

“Little one, little one, you’re breaking this old man’s heart,” the water man said. “Here, come with me. Things are always worse in the dark. Let’s let there be light!”

The water man’s body shivered and stretched up high.

“There we are, that’s better,” he said. “What do you think, selk—”

Matt didn’t know what he’d done. But he knew that whatever it was, it had required some kind of reaction which Matt hadn’t had.

He felt like a failure.

He couldn’t even keep up his cover.

Not even the old man wouldn’t have him back like this.

“Selkie-child?”

No one would have him.

“Selkie-child, please stop this weeping. Look at me, boy.”

Cold, bony fingers lifted his chin. The waterman gasped.

“Who’s done this to you, selkie?” he asked.

“I did,” Matt admitted.

“You did?”

“I—there was a truck and-and-and I pushed an ol-old man out of the way—”

The waterman’s body breathed slower than any that Matt had felt before. He could only be _fae_. And these threads—hair, Matt realized—were so heavy. They rasped against things far away, even though the waterman was still standing with him on the beach. They had to be yards and yards long.

He sniffed. The waterman’s old fingers slipped through his wet hair. Even though he was cold, his long, long hair trapped heat around their bodies and Matt thought that he felt a little warmer than before.

Eventually, the waterman pulled back and traced the edges of square, rough fingers around Matt’s cheek.

“How does a blind selkie find its way home?” he asked.

Matt didn’t know.

“By trying really hard?” he offered.

The waterman jerked back and laughed another whip-like laugh.

“By trying really hard, he says,” he guffawed. “By trying—you’re a comedian too, small one? Why, the talent coming off of you!”

Matt felt like he should have been offended, but more than anything he felt a little comforted.

“Can you help me out of the cave?” he asked. “I’ll go to the village and—and I’ll tell my Dad where Mum is and—and maybe I’ll come back?”

The waterman’s body swayed; his hair didn’t, it was too heavy.

“You may return to this cave,” he said, “I do like the company, but I’m afraid it might be too cold for you. You need more blubber!” he poked a finger into Matt’s ribs. “And a coat! This one doesn’t suit you at all.” He picked at Matt’s soaked shirt. Matt giggled.

The waterman paused.

“That’s what I like to hear,” he decided. “Laughter! Joy! Bring me joy, selkie-child! Why don’t we make a trade, yes? I’ll guide you out of this cave and you will find and bring me joy!”

Matt knew that the man was waving his hands in the air. He laughed again.

“How do I find that?” he asked.

“Oh, in many ways,” the waterman said, now elbowing him conspiratorially. “It doesn’t matter to me how it comes or what it looks like, I only say that you must bring it to me. Is this a deal?”

Matt could feel the hand laid flat out in front of him. He touched it with tentative fingers.

“It’s a deal,” he said.

The waterman handed him a long thread and told him to follow it and not to let go until he left the cave.

“There is a moment when you must go underwater,” he warned, holding Matt’s hand to help him from the little beach to the cavern behind it.

“Okay,” Matt said.

“Trust yourself,” the waterman said. “I’ll be watching you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good boy, now here’s where I leave you.”

The waterman’s hand left Matt’s and then both of them came to close around the one with the thread.

“Courage be with you,” the waterman said. And then he was gone. The sweep of his hair just vanished. Matt tried to find his form, but there was nothing anymore, just he himself and the cave and the hair.

He took a deep breath.

The hair helped a lot.

There were lots of rocks in the cave, just like there had been on the trail. Most of these weren’t slippery, no, but they were tall and jagged and they guarded the pools they surrounded like a half-set of jaws.

The hair slithered around the rocks when the path wasn’t so clear.

It eventually brought Matt to what he imagined was probably another sitting pool. It led straight into it.

Matt set his jaw.

He trusted the waterman. The waterman was kind. The waterman said he could come back.

He took off his boots again and tied them up just like before.

One big breath he told himself.

Kind of like what astronauts said on the moon.

He plunged in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's the song Matt and the waterman sing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLJmyUkJquU


	18. he'll hear no more the lowing

Mom had brought Mr. Murdock and Matt’s mom home with them so that the elders could bathe Matt’s Mom with ancient water and press wide, teal leaves to her wounds. They didn’t let Mr. Murdock be in the bathroom with her while they did it. They said something about modesty and him being a human.

Mr. Murdock took that sadly.

He took everything sadly right now.

Foggy and Candace watched him wring his hands and rub at his face from the top of the stairs. Mom had told them both to go to sleep, but there was no way Foggy was sleeping when Matt was out there, stuck with the Owl Witch.

She probably wouldn’t kill him; he was still little like Foggy.

She was probably more interested in keeping him until he was bigger and then turning him into one of her warriors and thieves like she’d done with her owls.

Matt was strong inside. Anyone could smell it on him.

His mom was strong, too. The Owl Witch had plunged one of her spears into her belly, but she hadn’t died or even turned that much to stone. Foggy could hear the elders whispering among themselves in the bathroom, saying that she was already coming back to them.

It wouldn’t be long now before she woke up and she and Mr. Murdock would set out to find Matt.

Foggy wanted to come.

“Franklin,” Mom snapped up the stairs.

Oops. Caught.

“Bed,” Mom ordered.

He made a face at her. She made a scarier one back.

“Move,” he told Candace. “We’ll wait her out.”

Foggy accidentally fell asleep. He woke up to a big commotion downstairs. He knew instantly that Matt’s mom had woken up. He threw himself up from the nest of blankets he’d made by the door and slipped out to peek down the stairs again.

Mr. Murdock’s voice had changed. He sounded more like a rumble than anything else.

Matt’s mom was making really bad sounds.

“We’ll get him back,” Mr. Murdock promised. “He’s a tough cookie, Grace.”

Grace snarled some very bad words.

“Wait—Grace, Grace, Grace—_no_,” Mr. Murdock said over the sound of a lot of other people struggling. The sound of skin squeaking against the tub sounded out and then a loud crash of water and people started talking all over each other.

Matt’s mom was apparently on a mission already.

“Go get ‘em,” Foggy whispered.

“Margaret,” Mr. Murdock said in the same tone he used when Matt and Foggy had leaned as far out Matt’s window as they could to throw paper airplanes. “Can we maybe think about this for just a—or not. Not is cool, too. How about clothes? Can we do clothes?”

Ah. Right.

Mom and the elders had taken away all Grace’s clothes to put her in the water.

She was probably a right sight at the minute.

“—_now_, Jonathan,” Grace’s scary nun-voice ordered.

“I’m on it, darlin’, I’ve been on it for hours. But you’ve gotta take it easy—”

“NOW, JONATHAN.”

Grace was scary. Foggy hid behind the bannister just in case her ire came over and looked up the stairs.

“What’s happening?”

Foggy looked over to his right and saw Candace there in a blanket-cloak.

“Matt’s mom woke up,” he whispered back. “She’s scaring everyone and making Mr. Murdock get ready to go out with her to find Matt.”

Candace stared with wide eyes down towards the yellow light in the living room. She looked back at Foggy.

“Can we go help?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Should we ask?”

Psh.

No.

That’s how people get told ‘no,’ dumbie.

“Matt needs a guide,” Foggy told Candace as they climbed down the side of the roof onto the shed’s.

“We can guide him,” Candace said.

Yeah, that was kind of the point.

“We’re gonna,” Foggy said.

“Gonna fight an owl,” Candace said dreamily.

Foggy scoffed.

“No one here is fighting any owls,” he said. “The grown-ups are going to chase down the owl witch. _We’re_ just going out to look for Matt, you know, in case he got dropped by an owl and stolen by a giant or a leprechaun or something. We’ll do it like that one time Bobby Taylor went missing.”

Candace stared at him.

“You were a baby,’ Foggy sighed, rolling his eyes.

“Was not!” she whined.

“Was to.”

“Was not!”

“Shut up, you’re gonna get us caught.”

Foggy and Candace had barely made it out of the yard when they had to hide in the bushes. Matt’s mom came tearing out of the house in one of Dad’s old shirts and nothing else. Not even shoes. She had her flute in her hand and turned around only to yell at Mr. Murdock to ‘move his ass.’

Foggy thought Mr. Murdock was hustling plenty, actually. Especially since he was busy trying to make Matt’s mom put on her boots.

She wasn’t interested.

“I’m gonna drown that woman in the bog she crawled out of,” Matt’s mom threatened when Mr. Murdock caught up to her and threw her arm over the back of his neck so that he could put her shoes on for her. “I’m going to _roast_ her and feed her to the priest.”

“These are not holy thoughts,” Mr. Murdock pointed out.

“BITE ME, JACKIE.”

Mr. Murdock’s control over the situation seemed to be slipping here. That was too bad, he’d been so confident in the forest. Although, to be fair, this was kind of the way that most sets of mates Foggy was aware of functioned.

He and Candace watched as Mr. Murdock finished with his shoe-tying and held his hands up in defeat towards his mate.

She huffed and grabbed one of his wrists and practically dragged him after her, without even saying thanks for the shoes.

Matt’s mom and dad went northeast, so Foggy and Candace went just plain old east. There wasn’t a whole lot out that way, which meant it was exactly the kind of place that Matt would have trouble in if he was off somewhere by himself.

The trails that way weren’t good, and there were lots of confusing dry stone walls that you had to climb over sometimes. Not to mention the cave.

The memory man lived in that cave. He slept there like a bear for ages and ages and ages until someone fell into his webs. Then he asked them questions they weren’t supposed to answer and if they answered anyways and answered wrong, he’d send them wandering round and round the cave, with no way of knowing how to leave.

Foggy’s uncle had told him and Candace at Christmas once that there were two ways in and two ways out of the memory man’s cave, but all of them were in pitch black darkness. To get in and out, you had to have done it before—which meant that you had to cut a deal with the memory man. You either promised him a hair of your own, which he sucked all the color from and braided into his ever-growing mane or you let him set a task for you.

It was easier to just give him your hair, Uncle Andrew had said, because only god knew what the memory man wanted from the outside world.

Foggy didn’t want to mess with that. They would avoid the cave.

It was nearly dawn when they waded their way through the grass at the top of the hill, where the trail petered off into mounds. Candace was panting. Foggy’s legs were tired, too.

It was a hell of a hike.

“Hope he didn’t come up here,” Candace said, looking down at all the hunks of stone they’d had to stumble and scrabble over to get that high up.

“Me too,” Foggy said. He bit his lip. “Maybe we’re doing this all wrong,” he said. “Maybe we should have gone the other way.”

“Towards the witch’s house?” Candace asked.

Foggy wasn’t so sure. He wasn’t quite sure that would be any more helpful than them wandering round up here.

He heard a shout.

“Oh,” he said, looking up. “That’s Mr. Murdock.”

Candace stood up.

“Behind?” she asked.

“Yeah, above the cave,” Foggy said.

“Should we go see?” Candace asked.

And like, at this point it couldn’t possibly hurt, could it?

They couldn’t get up higher than the cave. They found its mouth, but it opened up out of the cliff face. The walls on each side were towering. The trails at their bottoms faded out into nothing. To get around them, Foggy and Candace would have to hike back down and find a trail up.

“This sucks,” Candace said, pouting and squinting at the clusters of nettle that guarded the cave’s mouth. You really had to be careful getting out of it. There weren’t so much steps as a jumble of flat rocks up there.

“Should we go in?” Candace asked.

No.

“No,” Foggy said. “We’ll go back down to the stream and—”

“GRACE.”

Ah, there was Mr. Murdock again. Him and Grace sure were speedy. They had to have fought the witch in record timing to have made it all the way back around over here.

“Darlin’, remember how I said this was a bad idea?” Mr. Murdock shouted.

“NO,” Grace shouted back.

“What the fuck, girl?” Mr. Murdock cried after her.

Candace gasped at the bad word and covered her mouth.

Foggy blinked up that way. He couldn’t see those two, he could just hear them. They had to be pretty high up. Maybe at the cave’s entrance on the other side.

Hey.

“Mr. Murdock?” Foggy called up with his hands cupped around his mouth. “It’s Foggy! Me and Candace are on the other side of the cave! Matt’s not here!”

“What?” Mr. Murdock’s voice answered. “Foggy? What are you doing out here?”

“Helping!” Candace screeched back.

“What?” Mr. Murdock cried again. “What are you—GRACE, NO.”

He sounded like he had his hands full. Maybe they had the witch with them. Maybe she was guiding them.

“Huh-uh. No. I’ve had e-fucking-nough of y’all,” Mr. Murdock’s voice snapped above. “This is it. We’re callin’ the fuckin’ police and at least getting a flashlight before—OH, COME _ON_.”

Welp.

That was the sound of a lost battle if Foggy ever heard one.

“She went into the cave,” Candace gasped in realization.

Yeah, well. But she wouldn’t be the only one in there, if Foggy was reading those two right. He could vaguely hear a lot of swearing up there through the wind, which he took to be Mr. Murdock psyching himself up for the inevitable plunge.

“Their whole family’s gonna get stuck with the memory man,” Candace whispered.

“Matt’s not in there,” Foggy told her. “They must be taking the witch to meet him. Maybe they’re trying to get her to confess what she did with Matt.”

It was the only reason he could think of as to why the old folks had changed course and were trying their luck in the cave, anyways.

“Maybe,” Candace sighed. She looked down through the weeds. “Should we go back down?”

Yeah, probably. They weren’t being too helpful here—

A gasp and a wracking cough nearly sent both Foggy and Candace slipping and tumbling down into the mounds.

“What was that?” Candace asked.

Foggy spun around and stared up at the rocks.

More coughing met him.

His heart soared.

“Matt?” he asked. “Matt? Is that you?”

The sound of sloshing and splashing answered him.

“MATT?” Candace cried through cupped hands.

“Foggy, what’s going on?” Mr. Murdock shouted down at him. Apparently, he hadn’t taken the plunge quite yet.

“Stay there,” Foggy told Candace before searching for a way up to the rock-steps at the cave’s mouth. He found one; it wasn’t pretty. Or used. But it held when he got a foot up onto it and he found a little cup of dirt on the other side. Another foothold. There were more.

He scrambled up and only slipped once before he found himself balanced on a huge stone that straddled the cave’s threshold. There were a couple of flowers on it tied with a piece of twine. An offering.

He lifted his head to stare into the dark of the cave. There was all kinds of noise happening inside. His heart beat hard.

“Matt?” he called.

“Foggy?”

YES.

YES YES YES

“MATT!” He yelped. He leapt down into the water and crashed through it. Candace screamed outside in delight.

Foggy stumbled a bit as when his foot dropped further into the water than expected. It was piercingly cold. He stopped and breathed when he saw a dark shape on its hands and knees in the water. Foggy could just about see the orange hair in the dim light.

“You’re okay,” he cheered. Then lurched forward, crying. “You’re okay! You’re okay!”

Matt laughed when Foggy hauled him up.

“You beat the owl witch!” Foggy told him, as if he didn’t know. “Oh my god! You’re _amazing_!”

Matt threw himself forward and hugged him.

“I made it,” he croaked.

Foggy helped his soaked friend to the edge of the cave and shouted up at Mr. Murdock, “We found him! We found Matt! He’s okay!”

He didn’t get an answer, but from Candace’s beaming face, she’d already relayed that information.

“He says to stay right here,” she said.

Matt was puzzled.

“Who?” he asked. His hands were bright red, despite the cold of the water soaking them. Foggy winced at them. He looked back up at Matt’s face and found him a little scratched up there, too, but not otherwise too badly hurt. Mostly just pale.

“Your dad,” he said.

Matt’s attention locked on him.

“My dad?” he repeated.

“Yeah, he and your mom—”

“My _mum_?”

Oh. Right.

“She’s okay,” Foggy told Matt with hands wrapped around his wrists so he’d know for sure. “Your dad and I found her and called the others and—”

A cry echoed through the cave. Matt jerked back at it in surprise.

“Mum?” he asked.

Foggy edged back. Matt shoved his hands away and splashed back into the cave’s mouth.

“Mum?” he called. “Mum??”

There was nothing for a long moment and then another great burst of water. Grace slung her hair back when she caught her breath and took no time at all in pulling herself through the pool to the shallows. Matt cried out and ran out to meet her.

She caught him and clutched his head to her chest. They both sunk to their knees in the water.

“Matty,” Grace breathed, “Oh thank god. Thank god. Thank _god_.”

Matt was too squished up against her to make any noise back.

Grace pulled him back and immediately started checking him over, even though it was dark.

“Did she hurt you? Did you fall? Cuts? Scrapes? We found—” she froze and looked behind her. “I lost your father,” she said simply.

Matt laughed like that was the funniest thing ever.

“He’s probably talking to the waterman,” he said.

The who?

“The who?” Grace asked.

Matt made a combing gesture next to his head.

“The waterman,” he said. “He guided me out.”

Grace stared at him, then looked back over her shoulder.

“Jesus,” she said. “The two of you—you stay right there. _Right there_, don’t move.”

She sloshed back and her shoulders rose with the breath she took, then she dove back down. Matt seemed surprised.

Foggy came over and nudged him in the shoulder.

“We found you,” he said. Matt spun around and jabbed a finger into his chest.

“No,” he said. “I found _you_. Do you know what I’ve been through today—tonight? Do you know what I’ve been through tonight?”

Foggy couldn’t stop smiling.

“Tell me everything,” he said.

Matt did. They had time. It took a while to rescue Mr. Murdock from the memory man. The memory man _loved _him. The memory man apparently didn’t get many human visitors and was delighted with this one that had fallen into his trap; he became determined to show him all the tricks he had up his sleeves.

Mr. Murdock was too polite to stop him or cut a deal with him.

Grace dragged him to the surface of the pool after some presumably sharp words to the memory man and immediately laid into him in the mouth of the cave with a whole lot of accusations about his faults and how she’d given him “_One rule, _Jonathan. And you can’t even follow that—what in god’s name possessed me to think that you’d be any different as a grown man.”

Mr. Murdock’s defense was that the memory man had been super well-meaning.

Grace left him to think about what he’d done and went over to harass Matt in the sunlight. When she was done with that, she harassed Foggy and then Candace and then made a good circle back to take another few shots at Mr. Murdock and by the time she was through with all that, she announced it was time to go back down to the village.

Matt smiled at her the entire time.

Foggy imagined that almost losing your mom made you appreciate her a little more.


	19. of calves on the warm hillside

“This is Halloween! Halloween! HALLOWEEN,” Candace shrieked as she flew in from the porch and wove around all the living room’s furniture to the kitchen.

Matt and Foggy blinked after her. Matt tucked his feet up closer to him on the couch. They listened to Mom start swearing in the kitchen and then went back to the important business of planning out the best path around the island for—

“HALLOWEEN,” Candace screeched, throwing herself onto Foggy like a pup beaching its stupid self for the first time.

“MOM,” Foggy shouted back towards the kitchen.

“Candace, calm down,” Mom ordered without coming out.

Candace made a series of piglet-like noises and rolled off Foggy to go bother Matt. She grabbed his hands out from where he was hiding them and bounced up and down.

“Matt’s coming to our auntie’s with me!” she decided.

Matt turned his face towards Foggy, baffled.

He wasn’t going anywhere. It was a miracle that Mr. Murdock and Grace let him out of the lighthouse at all right now. Their whole family had just about had enough of the island’s residents and excitement for the time being.

“Matt can’t go to auntie’s,” Foggy growled at his sister for the fourth time in two days, “Matt’s gotta lead us. That’s way more important than trick-or-treating or candy apples or whatever.”

Candace blew herself up tall and stiff.

“_You_ wouldn’t know,” she huffed, “_You’ve_ never done any of that. You don’t know how fun Halloween is.”

Foggy pursed his lips and squinted.

“Halloween is for babies,” he said.

Candace gasped like a lady in a horror film, then tore off for the kitchen again, shrieking “MOM, FOGGY’S CALLING ME NAAAAAAMES.”

And yeah. He was. Moving on.

“We usually go around the island starting west, by your house, and then going to this bunch of rocks over here in the east,” Foggy explained, taking Matt’s hands and letting him feel the map he’d drawn really hard in ballpoint pen for him on the side table.

Matt hummed and nodded.

School was horrible on Halloween. Everyone wore parts of their costumes over their uniforms and acted all kinds of dumb and what they called ‘spooky.’

They were not spooky. Foggy could only stare at the people in front of him, waving around Poundland props in his face.

Foggy had seen spooky. And scary even, too.

The forest at night was both of those things. The boggarts which had crept over on ships from England hundreds of years ago--the ones that hid in little clusters of trees—were every type of creepy, spooky, and scary imaginable.

The guy in front of Foggy wrapped in painted cloth bandages as some kind of mummy was not. The kid pretending to be a vampire in a long black cloak was just pathetic. Especially when the school office’s receptionist, Foggy suspected, was an actual vampire who’d snuck over from Europe back when his dad had gone to this very school.

“Foggy,” his classmate Rebecca said, lowering her scythe, “What’s the matter? Don’t you like Halloween?”

“I like it,” he lied. “My family just doesn’t celebrate like this.”

The little group of kids in front of him made eye contact with each other and frowned.

“Well, we’re having a Halloween party at my house,” Rebecca said, “If you wanna come, you’re invited. We’re gonna bob for apples and carve pumpkins and watch some movies. My cousin in America showed us his favorites when we went to visit and we got a couple to watch.”

Psh. They were trying to lure him into coming with exotic American films.

As if they could.

Foggy had a much more interesting American to chase around on Halloween night.

There were only a couple of hours until the big event, but Foggy felt his excitement fade a little upon spotting Matt among the group of green plaid and khaki uniforms billowing out from under the stone cross.

Matt’s green sweater was too big for him, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. He liked to wrap his sleeves around his hands.

“Are you okay?” Foggy asked when he and Matt were moseying down the road to the docks where Mr. Murdock was no doubt trying to escape a conversation with the ferryman.

“I dunno,” Matt admitted. “I feel weird. I’ve never—Mum told me never to shift in front of people and there’s gonna be so many tonight and, like, I’m not—I’m not good with lots of _people_, Foggy. How am I supposed to lead a bunch of selkies? I’ve never—the most selkies I’ve ever been around at once is you and your parents.”

Oh.

Matt was shy.

Foggy forgot sometimes.

“It won’t just be selkies,” he said cheerfully. “It’ll be your friends, too! That horrible leprechaun. The memory man. The spirits of the forest and the fairy thorns.”

Matt looked even sicker than he had before.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Foggy assured him, backtracking. “You’ve got your mom helping and I think everyone on the whole island is scared of her.”

Foggy checked for the woman herself, just in case she was following them to eavesdrop.

“I’ll help you, too,” he promised. “You can’t sing for anything, but between me and your mom, everything will be just fine.”

That didn’t seem to do anything for Matt at all. Foggy sighed and tossed an arm over his shoulder.

“Everything’s gonna be just fine, Matty,” he said. “Just you wait.”

Dad took Candace to Auntie’s house while Mom enacted holy terror upon Foggy’s coat and his hair and his everything, really.

It was extremely unnecessary.

“Mom, I look _fine_,” he snapped over the hair dryer.

Mom ignored him and the fact that they would all literally be jumping into water in an hour’s time. Foggy didn’t need fancy, dried hair for diving.

“Maybe we should braid it,” Mom mused. “It’s getting long. Maybe we should cut it.”

Not on his life. He wriggled away from the hands holding him in place and made for the porch. He didn’t make it, but he tried.

“Franklin, stop pouting,” Mom scolded.

And for what reason? There were none, as far as Foggy was concerned. His hair had been mutilated. Ruined. All braided and pinned up into a crown with all sorts of flowers and sticks and stuff crammed into it.

“It looks nice, Fogs,” Dad said. He reached over to start to ruffle Foggy’s hair like he always did but caught himself and squeezed Foggy’s neck instead.

Foggy’s face hurt with how crumpled up it was.

Braids were old-fashioned. And the flowers and stuff in them?

Awful.

They poked at his scalp and his neck and they were just going to wash out in the water anyways. He wanted to wear it long, like a lot of the other pups did. They had special plastic rubber bands and clips that could stand time in the water and all Foggy had were pins and twigs and a half-face of dumb blotchy freckles.

He wanted some color.

“Come on, you. Let’s go meet Matt and Grace,” Mom said.

UGH.

Matt liked Foggy’s hair, but Matt always liked his hair, so Foggy wasn’t sure it counted all that much.

Still, Grace made Matt stop touching it, saying that all that poking would make it fall out of its styling.

“I hate them,” Foggy whispered when Grace and Mom and Dad turned away from them to talk.

Matt giggled.

“You smell like flowers,” he whispered back.

UGH.

Mom and Grace said that Foggy and Matt could go ahead down to the shoreline and start getting ready, which they jumped for. There was a cave down there for storing human clothes and keys and stuff. When he and Matt got to it, there was already a lantern burning inside and a couple of gym bags and shoes hanging from the water-logged, rotting beams that the selkie villagers had set into the top half of the cave. There were little candles burning in a few of the stone pockets in the walls—tiny shrines with laminated pictures of dead selkies which were weighed down against wind and water by handfuls of pebbles and sea glass or—for the really fancy—big tear-drop-shaped paperweights bought from the craftsmen in the village beyond the mountains.

Foggy and Matt started with their shoes. They took them off, tied them together and tossed them over one of the lower beams for kids, so that they hung next to each other. Matt’s warm, soft-looking boots swung lazily beside Foggy’s purple and gray hiking ones.

Matt seemed a little anxious to undress more than taking off his sweater and shirt until his mom got there. She had his coat and they were sharing a gym bag. Foggy shrugged and carried on. He dug his coat out of his bag and replaced its bulk with his clothes, then flung the coat on and fastened it tight around the neck and chest. To his dismay, his braids survived the rough treatment in between.

He let Matt feel his coat while they waited. Matt seemed anxious to touch that, too.

“It’s fine,” Foggy told him, “You won’t be able to feel it once we’re out in the water, so you may as well get all the feelin’ in now.”

Matt relented and petted at Foggy’s gray and white shoulder gingerly. He lit right up. 

“You’re so soft,” he said, petting with more than his fingertips this time.

Foggy beamed.

“Yeah, soft and fluffy,” he said. “And when I’m in the water, I’m whiter than a ghost! Mom says I practically glow. It’s how she finds me in the herd.”

Matt smiled.

“I’ll know you ‘cause you’re soft,” he said.

“You’ll know me ‘cause I’m gonna be singin’ in your ear,” Foggy corrected.

“Matty.”

They both turned towards the cave mouth.

Ah. The parental units had arrived.

Matt’s coat was so cute. So, so, _so_ cute. Foggy was going to die with how cute it was.

He was all dark chestnut on top, but that faded off to a cream belly. He had a couple of spots around the edges of his cream, mostly big ones, though. It was like the marbling that swooped and dipped over his mom’s sides and tummy had started to develop at the edges of his coat, but had gotten bored and fallen asleep only a quarter of the way in.

That left Matt looking a little like an otter.

He was so cute.

Mom was so charmed that she made him and Foggy stand together so that she could take a picture of them before Foggy went out and absolutely devasted his braids.

Grace and her super dark, super sleek coat herded Matt to her side and picked apart the last knot on one of the strings of his fastener to slip a red glass bead and a little gold bell onto it.

“The bell is from me, so I can keep track of you in the herd. But this is from Dad,” she told him while she retied the knot and let Matt touch the bead. “He says you’re gonna be great. It’s red like his robe—but we are fighting exactly no one, tonight, you hear?”

Matt loved this bead. He let Foggy see it. It was clear all the way through.

“I thought your dad’s human?” Foggy asked him. “Why’s he got a robe?”

Matt beamed.

“He’s a boxer,” he said. “Back home, he’s on tv and everything. They call him Battlin’ Jack and his color is red.”

Uh.

So that.

Explained a whole lot.

Matt and Grace had to go into the water first. Matt was surprisingly agile while he did it. Foggy had expected him to be a little wavery and shaking like he was on land, but instead he lunged out into the waves with zero trouble at all. Grace shouted and barked after him, and then they were both gone.

Foggy practically rattled with excitement in the meantime. Those two would go ahead for a little while, maybe five minutes, and they’d start singing to draw the _fae_ out of their homes and stones and wells and trees. Well, Grace would probably start singing. Matt had his lute strapped over his shoulder and he’d probably pop up on whatever he could and shift to play a few chords and get everyone moving and shaking.

Foggy wasn’t entirely clear how this was supposed to work, but Mom and Dad seemed to know, so he was just following their cues now.

They waited, with the water cold and rushing in and out around their ankles, scratching them lightly with bits of sand and shell.

Then the first chord rang out on the rock bed nearby and it was time.

The water was warm compared to the night air at this time of year and Foggy wanted to swim ahead to find Matt, but Mom wouldn’t let him. She made him stick next to her and swim slow and steady so that the spirits from down below wouldn’t get crashed into by a flailing baby grey pup on their way up to the surface.

That meant that it was ages before Foggy caught up to Matt. He had to just wait and watch the sea come alive with color and light in the meantime.

It was always a pretty good show.

By the time a good fifteen other selkies had come to form a troop around Foggy and his parents, they were just about to the northern-most peak of the island. Grace had a very haunting singing voice. It gave Foggy chills down his spine when it was just her calling. Matt’s tiny warble had no chance of carrying. It was probably the human in him that held him back from his full potential in that area, Foggy thought. It always manifested somewhere different in half-selkies. 

Occasionally, though when Matt found a bit of rock or a sandbar to shift on for a moment, he’d climb up and swing the lute back into his hands to accompany his mom. She made tight circles around the bit of land he perched on, and the two of them together made things light up and come alive for several minutes at a time.

In some ways, the pause between those moments of cheer created a kind of excitement. They got shorter and shorter as the night went on and as Matt got more confident in shifting mid-jump up onto the rock clusters.

Foggy caught him at one and nipped at his toes until he jumped back into the water to play.

Mom and Grace let them go caper around for a while in the stone caves and kelp before Grace called Matt back up.

They had to press on.

It was about an hour before dawn when the light and spirits illuminating the water were shown up by the spilling forth of a massive gold and orange aurora trailing its tendrils out over the velvet sky and its pearls. It stretched and stretched around and over the whole island and as it went; under its head, the Other Land blossomed out into the sea.

From afar, it looked like an oil slick, but of rainbows and fire instead of inky, shiny tar.

The herd turned that way. The dust motes, alive and awake, found their second wind this far out from shore. They chirped a little among themselves as they brightened and quickened their pace towards the aurora’s head.

Foggy found Matt playing out on a flat stone bed on an isolated rock cluster a good mile or so out from the light of the Other Place. He had his face turned the wrong way. Foggy dipped away from his Mom to come up and greet him.

He was too far away for toe-nibbling, so Foggy tossed himself up and shifted.

Matt recognized him and turned his way without stopping in his playing. His mom continued to sing in the distance.

“You’re doing so good,” Foggy said.

Matt smiled.

But it was kind of…sad?

“What’s wrong?” Foggy asked.

Matt shook his head and turned back out to sea.

“Matt, what’s wrong?” Foggy asked again.

This time, Matt let the chords fade. He turned his face down towards the waves.

“It’s okay if you can’t see it,” Foggy said. “You can feel it, can’t you? I know it’s not as good, but—”

“I’m not going with you guys.”

Wh-what?

“I’m staying here,” Matt said to his lute.

“But—you’re leading,” Foggy said. “You have to—”

“Mum’s taking everyone the rest of the way,” Matt said. “I’m staying here. There aren’t any more playing places after this.”

Well. Okay. But?

“But then you’re coming, right?” Foggy asked. His throat hurt all of the sudden.

“No,” Matt said with a weird kind of smile. “I’m staying here.”

“But why?” Foggy blurted out. “You’ll—it’ll be a whole year before you’ve got another chance. There’s no guarantee that you’ll get enough offerings to be strong on your own in that time, Matty. You should—you should come with us.”

The waves sounded really loud on the rock. Even louder without Matt’s chords in the air. Foggy’s herd had gone ahead past them by then. He could see the shimmer of their spirits under the water even from the distance.

“Matt,” he said. He caught ahold of Matt’s forearm through his wet coat. “Come with us. I don’t want you to fade or die or—”

“I want to be human,” Matt said.

Foggy didn’t understand.

Maybe he’d misheard. Maybe—

“I think I’ve decided,” Matt said. “I want to be a hero. Like Dad.”

But. But _why_?

Matt lifted his face to Foggy’s.

“Because that’s who I am,” he said. “I know that now.”

“You’d give up your coat to be human?” Foggy snapped. “To be _mortal_? Matt, that’s not—”

“My dad is human,” Matt interrupted. “And he’s the one who’s done everything for me my whole life, Fogs. Mum is great and I love her, but I don’t want to be like her, I think—I mean, I don’t want to live like her. Always hiding and stuff. I’ve got—” Matt dropped his face. “I’ve already got a lot to hide. That’s plenty.”

Foggy couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“You can’t decide yet,” he said. “You can’t just _know_ something like that. We’re still little. You can choose next year or the year after, or when you’re sixteen or something.”

Matt strummed another chord and it felt like relief, even though Foggy was trying to be mad at him.

“The more I go to the Other Place,” Matt said, “The harder it will be to become human. I probably can’t do it now, you’re right; I’ll have to wait a couple of years here. But I’ll be okay.” He smiled. “You and Candace give me offerings all the time. And Mum and I go swimming, so it’s not like I’m getting sick. Anyways, Fogs, you should go catch up. I’ll see you back on shore tomorrow.”

But.

But Matt was going to go back to New York at the end of the year.

And offerings didn’t always have the same impact when they came through the mail. And what if Foggy or Candace forgot one? What if the people in New York all decided that they were done believing in selkies and _fae_?

What would Matt do? He’d really just be happy to die? Or to…become human, Foggy supposed.

This was wild.

This was crazy talk.

Matt would come to his senses. His mom would come get him and take him to the Other Place. She’d realize how bad it would be if he didn’t.

Right?

Right.

“I’ll be seeing you, then, I guess,” Foggy said quietly.

Matt smiled at him with teeth this time. It made his eyes crinkle in the corners.

They were hazel.

Foggy slipped back into the sea.

Morning came and Foggy washed ashore with his braids all but a memory. He pushed himself up with his hands in the sand and looked around.

Matt wasn’t there.

He hadn’t joined them. Grace had barely scraped her flippers against the Other Place before turning back.

She said that her and Matt’s job had been done and she’d appreciate it if no one reached out to them in the year ahead.

“We thank you for your help for these last few weeks,” she said. “But while you are my people, you are not my son’s or my mate’s. Please leave them be.”

And she turned around and vanished into the deep.

Foggy sniffed and shook his hair free and swallowed hard.

Then there came a whistle.

He looked right and there was Matt, in a too-big sweater, kicking his bare feet in the water. Smiling.

Human.

Matt wanted to be human.

Foggy didn’t want him to be. Foggy couldn’t think of anything worse than being human. But Matt—well. Matt was his friend. And if Matt wanted to be human, then that was his right.

Foggy got the rest of the way up and came over to scrape sand off himself and to scold Matt for being so close to the water in his human form.

“You’re gonna drown you know,” Foggy huffed at him. “And _I’m_ gonna be the one who has to save you, _human_.”

Matt laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the end of this particular piece. 
> 
> The chapter that comes after this is an epilogue which takes place 22 years in the future. It has a very different tone from this, so if you want to leave with magical/mystical feelings, I recommend popping off here! 
> 
> But if you want a grumpy older version of this selkie Foggy in New York putting up with a less grumpy, mostly-human Matt, have at it!


	20. epilogue - no longer stolen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This piece takes place 22 years after the events of the rest of this fic. 
> 
> Fogs came to New York to do a degree in international law and that didn't work out for him because he found Matt and got persuaded to do criminal law and eventually found himself applying for residency. 
> 
> Matt still becomes Daredevil, which makes him a hero. Foggy commits to being his mate and so serves the same role that Maggie does in carrying his memory/spirit/soul on after Matt dies. They refer to this as Matt's 'afterlife.'

“WHEN I SAID YOU’RE A HERO, THIS IS NOT WHAT I MEANT,” Foggy shouted at Matt’s room from the kitchen.

“God,” he grumbled when the man himself refused to engage. “You motherfucker. Oh, look at me, I’m a hero. I’ve got a guaranteed afterlife and a bunch of new _fae_ friends who adore me. Wow, look, I’m so handsome and sad. Bet you can’t resist this ass—well I _can_, Murdock. And I am, and I’m gonna take that ass down to the harbor and drown you in it like the fucking pathetic _human_ that you are and when I’m done, you bet on your mama’s coat that I’m gonna—”

“Foggy?”

Oh, shit.

Karen must have come back in while he was busy being furious.

“Hey, girl,” he sleezed, “What’s up? You okay? Everything go okay?”

She stared.

“Did you just call Matt a ‘human?’” she asked.

“Mmmmm. Maybe,” Foggy said, picking at his nails nonchalantly. “Just makin’ sure he remembers is all. You know, Daredevil this, Daredevil that. He forgets he’s not invincible sometimes.”

Karen’s stank eye was the stuff of legends. Or stories at least. Karen might be the stuff of legends, but it would be a good couple of centuries before she really became one.

Not that she had to know any of those specifics.

“You got lunch,” Foggy celebrated. “Excellent, beautiful, lovely. Here let me help you. Then we can wrangle our local hero from his grave—den. I meant den.”

Karen handed him the plastic bag with concern written all over her face.

“Man, do you know how Irish you get when you’re mad?” she asked.

“I’m always Irish,” Foggy told her pleasantly.

“Uh-huh,” Karen replied stiffly. “Hey, I’m gonna go get Matt.”

For drowning purposes?

Pretty, pretty, pretty please?

“No,” Karen said. “Just for, uh. Feeding purposes.”

Foggy watched her edge away from the kitchen and glanced at him over her shoulder a few times. He bounced his eyebrows.

It was fine.

She’d figure it out eventually.

“Are you still mad?” Matt asked Foggy’s shoulders the next day.

“Define mad,” Foggy said.

“You’re still mad,” Matt translated. “I’m sorry, Fogs. I really am, I didn’t think he’d have a knife is all.”

Foggy felt his face twitch which mean that Matt definitely felt the heat he was putting off in his fury. Matt cringed appropriately.

“I brought you an offering?” he tried. Foggy felt his annoyance rachet up a whole additional step.

“I won’t be bribed, Matthew,” he snarled.

“It’s not a bribe,” Matt pleaded. “Just a gift. I realize I haven’t been a great friend lately and just, you know, wanted you to know I appreciate you.”

Oho.

No. Foggy knew what was happening here and it involved sad, wounded duck expressions. He was not turning around.

“Matt, you are not invincible,” he said.

“I know.”

“Just because I’ll be hauling your spirit around for the next millennia doesn’t mean that you can go out and be a reckless idiot,” Foggy reminded him. “I have to be with you when you die, you know.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Fogs. Really, I am. You don’t have to stick around if you—”

Not this bullshit again.

“You,” Foggy said, throwing himself around. “Have my _coat_, you fuckhead.”

Matt cringed appropriately.

“If you die and that thing gets lost, it will be on your head,” Foggy threatened him. “And I will lend your dumbass lute to every_ fae _child I can find, is that what you want your afterlife to look like, Murdock? You wanna be the Woody of the longest version of Toy Story in existence between the planes?”

“No,” Matt whimpered.

“That’s fucking right,” Foggy said. “So for the sake of us all, file that thick skull of yours down so that information and rational thought can pass through it. And for fuck’s sake, take me to the goddamned ocean before I have a stroke in the middle of this roof.”

“Can do,” Matt said. “But maybe, uh. Offering first?”

Foggy growled and finally looked down to see what it was that Matt had decided would be a bandage for this particular situation.

It was a bouquet of heather. All wrapped up with a blue silk ribbon.

Thoughtful.

“Mum says that it smells like home,” Matt said, holding the little bells out to Foggy.

Hmph. Considerate.

Alright, fine.

He took them.

Matt’s shoulders showed visible relief.

“Water,” Foggy told him. “Coat. Water.”

“Karen’s in the office,” Matt said, biting his lip. “I’ll tell her we’re talking a half day.”

Foggy said nothing. Matt made a pleading expression.

“Well, go on, hero,” Foggy snapped.

Matt went down the stairs, double-time.

“Foggy,” Karen whispered, “I realize that now is not the time, but I need to talk to you about Frank. He says some guy’s out in the city, specifically looking for you and—”

If it was that damn leprechaun again, Foggy was going to blow a gasket.

“Frank says he’s some kind of hunter? With some kind of spear?” Karen said. “Like, why would he target you, though? Frank’s trying to figure it out, it’s you and—”

Fucking pelt hunters.

God, every time Foggy thought this city couldn’t get worse, it went and outdid itself.

He turned to Karen.

“I am giving up my residency,” he told her lightly. “I’ve had enough. I’m going back home. I’m selling tackle for the rest of my life.”

Karen froze with huge eyes.

“Uh?” she said. “That does not? Answer the question?”

UGH.

“MATT,” Foggy barked. “I need you to go show a man my papers.”

Karen blinked in shock.

“We’re doing what now?” she asked.

Foggy sighed.

“What the fuck is happening?” Frank asked a couple of hours later. “This is not an immigration thing. Don’t think for a second I’m falling for that bull.”

Foggy cocked a hip out.

“Well, if you want to know so badly, why don’t you just ask?” he asked in the appropriate _fae _tone that any good Irishman would know better than to continue fucking with.

“Okay?” Frank said. “I’m asking.”

Foggy felt a muscle in his jaw jump in irritation. Karen glanced at him in question.

“You have to ask properly,” Foggy specified slowly.

He wasn’t entirely sure if Frank was picking up what he was putting down, but given his screwed up expression, he might have been somewhere in between. Thankfully, Matt finished showing the pelt hunter the piece of Foggy’s coat that he kept with him sometimes, usually when Fogs himself was out at sea.

The old man wouldn’t touch a claimed seal. He knew better than to test his luck and wisdom there.

“Okay,” Frank said suspiciously, “Why’s some crazy old guy with a harpoon so interested in you of all people?”

“Because he is very handsome,” Matt interrupted. Foggy let him. It was only the truth.

His coat was a thing of beauty. There were many a warrior or _fae_ who would be willing to pay a high price for it. God knew what kind of spells or potions or trades they’d use it for after that.

Frank and Karen made eye contact with each other.

That’s right. Be confused.

“Well, if we’re done here,” Foggy sighed. “Mr. Hero, shall we take our leave?” He held out an elbow.

Matt took it with a saucy, “Why yes, we shall, gorgeous.”

“What the actual fuck is going on between them?” Frank asked Karen behind their backs.

“Mr. Nelson,” Peter the semi-spider child asked him, “Why do you call Matt ‘hero?’”

Peter made every sense in Foggy’s head twist over onto itself sometimes. He was not _fae_. But he was not human. But he was not quite a hero. But again, he certainly wasn’t _fae_. Foggy always wanted to sniff at him until he got an answer, but Peter worked with Matt pretty often now and more than one person huffing away at a body landed one pretty squarely in ‘suspicious’ territory.

“Because he is one,” Foggy explained.

Peter cocked his head.

“Well, yeah,” he said, “But you don’t call me or Wade or Jessica or Luke or anyone else that.”

Peter smelled like chamomile and basil. Foggy considered him for a long, long moment.

“Peter,” he asked, “What do you do to ward off bad luck?”

Peter blinked up at him in surprise. Then he frowned and fumbled a bit,

“Well, uh. Depends on the luck, I guess,” he said. “If it’s just luck, then hematite beads might help, but if it’s bad energy, then you might need like, amethyst or mint or something. But if it’s money luck you need, then a buckeye in your pocket might help. Why?”

Ahhhhhhhh.

Finally.

It made sense now.

Foggy smiled.

“Can you keep a secret, Peter?” he asked.

Peter lit up and nodded.

“On your life?” Foggy pressed.

Peter nodded harder than before. Foggy felt his grin widen.

Little baby witch.

Teeny, tiny human-creature.

Forget the spiders. Foggy had never met an urban child with the Sight and Sense before.

“Go into Matt’s office,” he whispered, “And open his center desk drawer and you’ll understand why I call him ‘hero.’”

Peter pouted a little in confusion but stood up and followed the direction. Foggy waited until he was through the door before collecting his things and heading down the stairs.

No questions, please, audience. This was a game of silences.

It didn’t take long. A couple of days at most.

The kid must have gone home to do some research, as was the way of his people. Foggy waited. And agitated Matt to let him the fuck out into the harbor in the meantime. Matt threw up his hands finally, and blessing his old man for having put up with him as a child, shoved Foggy’s coat in his arms and told him he’d be a few blocks up north for most of the night and then they went their separate ways.

Peter came stumbling down the docks a couple hours later with MJ and Ned right at his heels, telling him to slow down and be reasonable. Foggy ducked under the murky water and waited until Peter was staring out at it with wide eyes.

“See?” MJ said. “You’re being weird, Peter. It was just a coincidence. Matt’s Catholic. He doesn’t believe in any of that shit.”

Bold words, young one.

“But,” Peter said. Ned touched his arm.

“Foggy was probably just screwing with you,” he said. “You know, joking? Guess that means you’re one of the family now, right?”

Mmmm.

No. On both counts.

Foggy didn’t play these games with Karen. He only played human games with her.

Peter sighed at the water. He had—

Well. Would you look at that.

He had an offering in his hands. It was small. Probably something shiny. Maybe he’d noticed in Foggy’s absence, the little cup of pebbles and metal that he kept on his desk. They were things that Matt gave him. They weren’t offerings in the traditional sense, since Matt couldn’t see and so didn’t have the same aesthetics for offerings, but they were offerings nonetheless and Foggy loved them and honored them.

That was his cue.

“I guess you’re right,” Peter said.

He held the little rock out over the water and sighed as he dropped it in.

“I guess we can go home,” he said.

Foggy dove down after the stone. He dug it out of the silt and swam back up to the surface. The kids had walked down the dock by then, so he made a great fuss, splashing around and the like, when he chucked it back after them and nailed Peter between the shoulder blades.

“OW.”

Foggy ducked back under the dock.

“Dude, what the hell?” Peter hissed.

“I didn’t do anything,” Ned said.

“Look.”

Atta girl, MJ.

Foggy waited through the silence that followed. Then waited patiently as the sound of footsteps on wood edged back over to the edge, nervous this time.

“I don’t wanna look,” Peter whimpered. Foggy hugged the dock and got ready. “God, I don’t wanna—what if it’s sea witch or a body or something?” he asked the other two.

“Bodies don’t throw things,” MJ reminded him.

Come closer, children.

“Sea witches aren’t real,” Ned further said. “It was probably a bird.”

“This is the same rock,” Peter defended.

“Are you sure?”

“Do I look unsure, Ned?”

“Mmmm.”

“Give me that,” MJ said. She stomped over to the side of the dock but was looking the wrong way. Foggy waited.

“There’s nothing down there,” she said back towards the others. “See?”

Damn, come on. Over _here_.

Peter frowned and took the rock from MJ. He made to drop it again.

Goddamnit.

Foggy ducked low and caught the rock before it disappeared into river dirt again. This time, though, he bolted up and shocked the shit out of the kids by splashing up and dropping the rock right between all their feet.

They screamed.

It was very validating.

Peter threw himself in front of the others out of instinct and stared down at Foggy’s eyes and whiskers. Foggy waved a flipper at him.

“OH MY GOD,” Peter shrieked.

The other two started hushing immediately.

“OH MY GOD,” Peter carried on, ignoring them. “Fogs? Is that really you? Really, really?”

Psh.

He ducked down. The kids rushed to the edge. Or so he discovered when he re-surfaced and threw his wet hair over his shoulder.

They screamed again.

It would never not be validating.

“What’s up, human-children?” he asked, leaning up casually onto the dock. 

“You’re a selkie,” Peter accused Matt once he was through with Foggy. Matt stared past him and then shrugged and carried on with pulling all the files out of the cabinet.

“You’re supposed to deny it,” Peter said a little desperately.

“I’m human,” Matt said.

“Double D, at least try,” Peter pleaded with him.

“I’m _hu_man,” Matt said.

Peter was dying. He came over to paw at Foggy.

“He’s not, is he?” he asked. Foggy pitied the poor boy.

“He’s mostly human,” he said.

“I’m soooooo human,” Matt declared without feeling.

“YOU.”

Ah. Hello, Frank. How could Foggy be of service this particular afternoon?

“YOU.”

Very good. Repeating words now. That was an excellent first step towards language acquisition. No worries, Frank. You’ll be up to speed with the rest of the population any day now.

Frank made the sign of the cross over himself.

“I trusted you,” he said afterwards.

Really now?

Foggy took his hands off his keyboard.

“I’m not a demon, Frank,” he pointed out lightly. “Just a seal.”

“A fucking person-seal. Seal-person. That guy wants your _pelt_,” Frank blustered pointing off at the imaginary pelt hunter. “Because, and I quote, ‘it’s really high quality.’ What the actual fuck, man?”

“People have hunted seals for thousands of years,” Foggy explained. “My coat is very pretty. Would be very good for any number of rituals and purposes. That’s no one’s fault. I just don’t feel like handing it over or getting stabbed for it. And as far as those folks are concerned, if a seal’s got a human, then the human owns their pelt. Is it fair? No. But it’s better than them stabbing people willy-nilly.”

Frank didn’t appear to appreciate this explanation.

“Red owns you?” he asked in a tight and high voice.

Foggy scoffed.

“Are you kidding?” he said. “If anyone owns anyone, then I own him.”

Frank decided he needed to sit down.

“Does Karen know about this?” he asked.

Foggy gave him a Look.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Frank swore.

“Frank has informed me that I am in an exploitative relationship with you,” Matt informed Foggy that night. Foggy hummed and felt Matt press in closer to listen to the vibrations in his chest.

“You can leave it at any moment,” Foggy told him.

“If I leave, you’ll go back to Ireland,” Matt mumbled.

Damn right he would. This place was hostile to every type of _fae_.

“You could come with me,” Foggy said. He smoothed a palm across Matt’s bare back and he cuddled in even closer. “You know. Pledge all your stupidity to the island in return for your coat. We can run off together for the north Atlantic.”

Matt huffed.

“I’d freeze,” he said.

“Well, you’d just have to fuckin’ eat the fish you catch for once, then wouldn’t you?” Foggy pointed out to grow that huff into a laugh.

It worked. Matt smiled at him.

“I don’t like fish,” he said. “And I love New York.”

Foggy stroked his fingers languidly through Matt’s hair.

“I hate it,” he whispered.

Matt cackled.

“FOGGY,” Karen cried.

For fuck’s sake, Frank. _Really_?

Karen looked on the verge of tears.

“How could you not tell me?” she asked. “I bought you a seal calendar for Christmas. I bought you seal _slippers_.”

“They’re appropriate,” Foggy said with helpless hands.

“OH MY GOD, IS THAT RACIST??”

And there she goes. Where she stops, nobody knows.

“DON’T LEAVE ME.”

“Karen. Honey, I need you to breathe,” Matt said.

“Don’t leave meeeeee,” Karen wailed slightly quieter this time.

“No one’s leaving anyone,” Matt said. “Foggy and I just happen to be mostly Irish and mostly selkie. That is literally all that is happening here. And anyways—I’m only a half selkie. I’m the shittiest selkie that ever was. I’m such a shitty selkie, I gave my coat back to the ocean.”

Karen stood up and just loomed over Matt in horror.

“We need to get it back,” she realized.

“Hear, hear!” Foggy called from the other room.

“No,” Matt said.

“We need to get it back,” Karen decided. “Where did you last have it?”

“Karen, no,” Matt said. “That’s—that’s not how it works.”

“I’ll find it,” Karen said, grabbing Matt’s hands and clutching them in her own. “I _swear_ I’ll find it.”

Matt grimaced.

Matt was so embarrassed, he couldn’t do anything but press himself into Foggy’s shoulder and make a high-pitched distress signal.

Peter watched him with interest.

Karen flopped out onto the dock in a complete diving suit, ready to go.

Foggy had yet to witness anything greater with either of his sets of eyes.

“Don’t worry, Matt, I’m gonna find it,” Karen assured him.

When she’d wrung out of Matt that the last place he’d had his coat—as a fifteen-year-old—had been in the Hudson, she’d planned a whole excursion over both Matt and Foggy’s increasingly expansive explanations of just why that wasn’t going to work.

“Just end it for me,” Matt whimpered into Foggy’s shoulder. Foggy rubbed his back comfortingly. He’d spent ages in the Hudson by that point. If the coat had been down there, he certainly would have found it before Karen did.

“Let her have it,” Foggy told him. “This is how she’s processing her new world.”

Karen did not find the coat, as predicted. She decided to take her case to the supreme court, ie. Sister Maggie, alias Grace.

Sister Maggie blinked super, super slowly at Karen and then at Foggy and Matt. Foggy could just make out Mr. Murdock losing his shit behind her. He seemed to be doing okay in the afterlife. He and Grace had an adorable relationship which involved her doing nun things while her giant ghostly mate hopped along after her, getting distracted by all the nice things happening which she didn’t bother with. Foggy liked to think that he brought her attention to them when he could.

He did that with Matt, anyways, to the point where Matt had banned him from sitting in the pew next to him during church.

“You’re a ghost, go do ghost things,” Matt had told him.

He’d pouted and sulked off and Sister Maggie had given Matt an earful about honoring his father after that particular mass.

Beautiful.

The ideal type of afterlife, in Foggy’s opinion. He couldn’t wait to drive Matt batty by doing everything that he absolutely despised in front of him with him being incapable of intervening without permission.

“He can’t just go re-find it,” Grace explained very patiently for Karen’s human brain. “He gave it away. To get it back, he must sacrifice something of equal value.”

Karen stared at Matt.

Matt couldn’t see it, but he could feel it and hide behind Foggy all the same.

“You don’t need to be human,” Karen told Matt as she followed him in circles around the office.

Foggy was pleased with how this was going, honestly.

“Humans are terrible,” Karen explained with her hands.

“I’m terrible,” Matt told her. “See? I fit right in.”

“You’re terrible because you’re leaning into being a human,” she said.

“The _fae_ can be just as terrible,” Matt told her.

“Yeah, but they get a pass because they’re _fae_,” Karen sighed like he was the one being difficult here.

Foggy could listen to this all day.

“Karen,” Matt finally said seriously, “I _want_ to be human. I get how that’s hard for people to understand, alright? But it’s what I’ve wanted ever since I was little, okay? I’ve been both. I like being human better. That’s the end of this. I’m not talking about it anymore.”

Karen crossed her arms and chewed her lip at Matt’s retreating back. She turned her attentions onto Foggy.

“Show me,” she said.

Foggy shrugged. Then stood up and gathered his things. She brightened like the sun.

“I want to pet you all day,” Karen decided with her cheek on her arm on the dock.

Jessica was a little concerned about her. She’d caught them in the streets and had decided to tag along. She’d known about this for a while now. _Fae_ could sense each other.

“He smells like fish,” Jess pointed out.

“So pretty,” Karen said.

“And that’s a lot of whiskers,” Jess carried on pointing out.

“So chub,” Karen said. “I love it. Hey, can I swim with you?”

Not in this water, darlin’.

He nibbled at her hand until she took it back and then nudged her over so he could come back up and shake himself out. Karen gasped at his human form.

“Foggy,” she said. “You’re so _pretty_.”

Oho.

Now, this is what he called ‘honoring the _fae_.’

Maybe New York wasn’t so bad after all.

Karen hunted down Matt and demanded to see him in his coat. Reminded that he no longer had said coat, she hunted down Sister Maggie and asked for a description and/or pictures of him in his coat.

Sister Maggie sighed and said she only had baby pictures and Foggy almost actually died.

“Matty,” he cooed, “You looked like an _otter_.”

Matt hated everything happening at the moment. He didn’t like to be left out, for sure, but he had also had enough of his dad gushing over him and pictures of him as a baby. There was no obvious escape from it.

“Seal,” Matt snapped. “I looked like a seal. Just like any other normal selkie.”

Karen was overwhelmed.

“Baby,” she whispered, holding a picture of human baby Matt in one hand and seal baby Matt in the other. Matt’s first coat had indeed been pretty ginger in there among the cream. And he’d been so tiny in his human form, all curled up in Mr. Murdock’s big boxer arms.

“Why aren’t you cute anymore?” Karen demanded.

“I’m adorable,” Matt countered.

“You’re all snuggled up against your dad’s bare chest in this one,” Karen informed him. “You are kneading his absurd pec in your sleep, you bastard. This should be illegal.”

Mr. Murdock had fond memories of those times. Matt shushed him before he even got started and Karen thought he was shushing her, which led to a whole different conversation, which in turn left Karen even more overwhelmed than before, but now compelled to inform Mr. Murdock that he was a very handsome and soft-looking dude, yes, sir.

Mr. Murdock didn’t know what to make of being specifically addressed by a human who couldn’t see him and responded by flicking through all Sister Maggie’s pictures to find pictures of Grace herself, which he piled into Karen’s hands with tooth-souring pride.

Sister Maggie allowed this to an extent, but drew the line when Mr. Murdock started to produce the especially ‘scandalous’ ones of her and him together or her showing an emotion at baby Matty.

These were not allowed, apparently.

Matt seemed to not be able to agree more.

Karen, however, accepted all of these and decided that she was now completely and utterly okay with being friends with a load of selkies and this really friendly ghost. She was able to cope with that.


End file.
